Fiber optics have long been touted as the solution for American businesses’ ever-expanding broadband needs, but there always has been a critical obstacle: the “last-mile” problem of getting fiber-optic cable from outlying networks into the buildings where people can actually put it to use.

Fiber-optic wire carries much more information than conventional copper wire and is far less subject to electromagnetic interference. While most telecommunications companies now have fiber-optic long-distance lines, many don’t have last-mile access from a provider’s branch office to businesses or homes where it’s needed. This is primarily because the process of constructing that access is labor-intensive and disruptive to existing streets and sidewalks.

Readers of the business press know there has been much talk about a glut of fiber nationwide. But the truth is that this glut has resulted primarily from the overbuilding of long-haul fiber lines. Around the United States, we have the equivalent of massive construction of new high-speed, limited-access highways with few off-ramps. So it is no wonder that demand hasn’t risen to absorb this new capacity. Now, a number of recent technological breakthroughs are helping cities and counties solve the last-mile problem.

Fiber Optics in Demand
Even as the national economy slows, the demand for fiber-optic connectivity in major metropolitan areas has intensified. While the current economic downturn is, with any luck, a temporary phenomenon, business planners understand that their long-term survival depends on the ability to move massive amounts of information at high speeds. As the market for information grows—for such uses as high-definition television, streaming video, telemedicine, interactive videoconferencing, and remote learning—the need for bandwidth grows along with it.

When potential broadband users get a taste of the opportunities available to them with high-speed connectivity, they look for various means of getting the fiber to their sites. Telecom companies know the demand is there, and analysts know it’s there; the question is: why do fewer than 10 percent of large commercial buildings have fiber in them?

Obstacles to Meeting the Demand
The most significant obstacle to meeting demand has been the so-far-presumed need to lay fiber-optic cable under heavily used streets in densely populated areas. While telecommunications companies race to get fiber into the ground, local governments are slowing, sometimes actually halting, the process because of its disruptive nature. Citizens are tired of having their streets ripped up, their traffic snarled up, and dangerous trenches dug in their sidewalks. Many localities have enacted three- to five-year bans on digging trenches for fiber-optic cables.

A number of new methods for installing fiber-optic lines now are enabling local governments, large universities, utilities, and businesses to meet broadband needs and to build networks without the extensive street trenching and traffic-flow disruption typical of traditional installation methods.

Natural Gas Infrastructure and Other Solutions
In October 2001, representatives of major North American gas local-distribution companies witnessed the first installation of a proprietary technology that threads fiber-optic cable through distribution lines for live natural gas. The new fiber line was installed in a portion of the service territory of Frontier Energy, a natural gas distribution utility in North Carolina.

Because the fiber-in-gas process that has been developed is completely safe and does not require street trenching, it is quicker and cheaper to install as well as less disruptive to traffic. Leading natural-gas distribution utility companies are expected to offer this service throughout North America beginning this year.

The process encases fiber-optic cable in a polyethylene conduit, which is then inserted into natural-gas distribution lines. The conduit is made of the same material used in plastic gas distribution pipes all over the world. As gas pipelines already are in place underground, the new technology allows for “hot-tapping” into pressurized, functioning gas lines without shutting off gas service or keeping gas utilities from doing any necessary pipeline maintenance or any other service needed for public safety. The technique used here is the same as that used by gas utilities for decades in their normal inspection or repair of their systems.

Other companies are attempting to use underground sewers to accomplish the same fiber connections. Wireless technology is another approach to the last-mile problem, providing an air-interface alternative to traditional phone systems. Fixed, wireless local-loop installations, in which the last-mile gap is bridged through the airways, are being used in some developing countries, particularly in rural areas.

Savings and Benefits over Traditional Installation
The fiber-in-gas method, using existing natural gas infrastructure, offers cost advantages over conventional trenching methods amounting to savings of 30 to 50 percent. Route planning also is simplified and speeded up. When airwaves and gas and sewer lines are used, routes already are in place, and no new planning is needed to avoid below-ground obstructions. Moreover, there are far fewer disturbances to public services and facilities than would be the case in planning a new route, so the permitting process is much quicker.

Another benefit of addressing the last-mile problem is the potential of lowering the cost of data rates for businesses. According to Dave Schaeffer, chief executive officer of an optical Internet service provider that delivers high-speed Internet access to businesses, data rates will decline by as much as 25 percent from current levels once the last-mile problem has been solved.

In recent years, localities nationwide have seen new data processing centers locating their facilities in suburbs where they can enjoy the benefits of new construction, which now includes fiber installations. This is a benefit that, up until now, often has been denied to potential users in major urban centers.

New methods for fiber-optics installation offer local governments viable options for bringing broadband access to their constituents where they are, thus helping to keep already established business centers vital, active, and competitive, as well as attracting new companies considering relocation.

Michael Clover is president, Sempra Fiber Links, San Diego, California.