Residential Fiber

Growth has been steady in new service installs in the residential areas of Sandy.

Business Fiber

Several new businesses have been installed over the past few months. SandyNet staff is continuing to make progress on additional installations and expanding the availability of fiber service in the business district.

New Development

As more and more development occurs around Sandy, staff has been working to keep up with the needs of the developers. We are working with developers on several projects to ensure facilities are designed and installed properly to allow for these new homes to be connected to the fiber service as soon as they are ready for move in.

Miscellaneous

SandyNet has been nominated for Sandy Chamber of Commerce Sensational Business Award. I believe this is a wonderful testament to the impact that SandyNet is having on our community. I am very proud of the efforts of my staff and their dedication to making SandyNet a truly sensational service for our community!

We were able to fill our vacant Systems Administrator position with a new staff member, Jeff Loder. He’s doing an outstanding job getting acquainted with a new network as well as a lot of new applications and services that the city utilizes for our day to day operations.

Residential Fiber

Growth continues at a steady pace in the residential service market. We are consistently doing 6 – 8 hookups per week and have a steady stream of construction requests coming in. The lead time for service activation is under two weeks at this point.

Business Fiber

Staff continues to make progress getting more and more business premises ready for installation. We are working with the Economic Development department to help manage this process as there are a lot of businesses that are very interested in service.

New Development

We have been working with developers in several different areas of town to ensure that the new developments are connected to SandyNet Fiber infrastructure. Often times with construction there are issues that come up that have to be dealt with. SandyNet Staff has been very responsive to these issues and we have received some excellent feedback on our responsiveness as the “local” guy compared to some other providers.

Residential Fiber

We continue to see steady growth in this area. More homes are getting connected every month and we are currently sitting at approximately a two to three week lead time for a new service request.

Business Fiber

Business fiber continues to be an area of focus. We have installed several more business facilities over the past month and will continue to focus in this area going forward.

Infrastructure Upgrades

SandyNet staff implemented some significant upgrades to our core routing infrastructure. The new equipment that was installed improves the redundancy of our core network, and provides some much needed breathing room that will allow us to continue to grow our core connections to the internet.

Additionally, we have implemented some upgrades to our FTTH system that enabled us to test some new WiFi enhancements for our FTTH customers. More upgrades are in the works but we anticipate having some newly enhanced WiFi choices available for our customers within the next few months.

Office Move

The IT Department and SandyNet team have a new home. We moved our office to the Sandy Community Campus this month and are still working on getting everything setup. I am very proud of the effort my staff put in to make this move possible with a minimal impact to SandyNet  customers and city staff. We are still working on getting things setup, stay tuned for info about an upcoming tour of the new space.

Residential Fiber

We are continuing to see orders for residential fiber service come in. We are working to keep these service installs as a priority to prevent a backlog from building up again. The goal is to meet these service requests within a two week time frame which thus far has been attainable. The holidays will throw a little bit of a wrench in the gears, but we should be able to recover in the new year.

Business Fiber

Business fiber was a big focus for the month of November. The SandyNet team installed a lot of infrastructure into the business district and was able to get several businesses connected to the service. We will continue to focus on this area for the next several months. Business installations are a lot more complex than residential installations, so the time investment required per customer is substantially greater.

Residential Fiber

We have finally caught up with demand on residential service construction and have eliminated the waiting list for getting new service. For months now we have had a back log of 4-6 weeks or longer for construction, but as we have connected more and more homes around town the demand for new services has begun to taper off to a manageable level.

Our goal going forward is to keep these new service orders caught up as they come in. There is still a process to go through for locates and construction scheduling as new services are requested, but we should be able to turn new service orders around within 1 – 2 weeks of ordering.

Business Fiber

As construction activities in the residential areas has begun to taper off, or installation activities in the business district has ramped up to take up the slack. SandyNet staff has been working diligently for the past several months to pull in cable and splice everything together in the business district. We have a long list of business properties that have requested service and we will be spending the next several months going through that list to get businesses online.

Calix ConneXions

Joe Knapp was honored to speak at the Calix ConneXions conference in Las Vegas this month. Calix once again highlighted the success of the SandyNet project and asked Joe to participate in a discussion on the main stage. The reach of this show through the telecommunications industry is substantial with approximately 2,000 industry professionals in attendance.

Fiber Network

We deployed fiber new two new neighborhoods during the month of August. Champion Village and Zion Meadows accounted for over 6,000 feet of fiber placed as well as many new terminals for customer connections. These two neighborhoods have capacity for an additional 109 homes in Sandy.

We also completed several new construction jobs to add SFR homes to the existing network. Due to the amount of projects on the team’s plate these service requests are beginning to pile up again but we are working hard to keep everything moving and keep customers happy.

Bluff Road Utility Move

This project took an unexpected turn and ended up being a lot more complicated and involved than I had hoped. We had NorthSky out to do the work but due to some unforeseen conditions under the ground we were forced to modify our plan to re-route the cables in this area and ended up having to cut, replace, and resplice a little over 3,000 feet of cable. I am very proud of the work the SandyNet team put in on this project. They day of the cut was a very long night and then another 12 hour day following that to ensure that all customer services were restored and all of our cables, conduits, and vaults were relocated correctly and out of the way for the contractors working on the road widening.

Urban Renewal District

No significant progress was made on UR fiber during the month of August due to the demands of other projects. This will be a major focus for the next few months so stay tuned for updates on getting business customers installed.

Fiber Network

We have successfully caught up with the demand for service on existing residential homes. We currently have service requests pending for three homes that are less than a week old, the plan is to stay caught up on these requests as they come in allowing us to get any new service requests fulfilled within 2 to 3 weeks depending on construction difficulty.

This does not mean we are sitting around on our hands however. We have several neighborhoods with new homes being built that require installation of fiber and in some cases a pretty significant amount of construction activity as well. We anticipate these projects keeping us very busy for the next several months.

MDU Deployment

We have completed several G.Fast installs in the Cascade Crest apartment complex and have our backend systems ready to move ahead full speed on this. We will be proceeding on these deployments and exploring opportunities with other apartment complexes around Sandy as time permits.

Bluff Road Utility Move

Due to the widening project at Bluff road several SandyNet terminals and vaults need to be relocated. This project has set us back schedule wise and quickly become more complex than originally anticipated. Due to some limitations with our ability to move current infrastructure we are resorting to setting some heavy traffic rated vaults over existing vaults in what will be the new roadway. SandyNet staff does not have the equipment required to safely install this type of vault so we are seeing quotes from contractors to perform this work.

Urban Renewal District

Conduit construction and restoration are complete for this project. We still need to place fiber and splice the entire commercial area before we can begin installing businesses. Originally our plan was to perform this work internally with SandyNet staff but due to the demands being placed on the team by other projects we are looking into bringing a contractor in to perform this work.

Fiber Network

We continue to see steady growth on the residential segment of the FTTH network with 51 new customers in March. Demand wise the SandyNet team has been working very hard to get caught up with demand for service. Currently we have 22 pending service requests which is a huge improvement in back log capacity. We are hoping to go into the summer months with a very minimal turnaround time on service request to activation.

MDU Deployment

G.Fast deployment is underway in the Cascade Crest apartment complex. In next months report expect to see details about the launch of the service and active customer information.

Urban Renewal District

Conduit construction is roughly 50% completed for this project. North Sky has been doing an outstanding job of installing this new infrastructure with minimal disturbance to businesses and regular traffic in the urban renewal district.

Fiber Network

Growth continues on the fiber network. In 2016 we added 396 customers to the network accounting for approximately a 20% increase in our customer base. SandyNet staff has been working diligently to keep up with the demand for service.

Weather has caused delays for construction this month which is putting us behind on getting customers connected again. This is very frustrating but unfortunately outside of our control, water is an essential component in underground construction and when temperatures dip below freezing it is a risk to our crew and our equipment to perform construction tasks. We are looking forward to temperatures getting back in the 40s and 50s.

MDU Deployment

We have sent a proposal for construction to an MDU property in Sandy that we would like to start or G.Fast deployment with. We are waiting to hear back from them for approval but hope to have this site deployed in January or February (weather permitting).

Urban Renewal District

This project has been awarded and construction is set to start in the second or third week of January. Again, construction of this nature is heavily influenced by weather, so delays may be in store if nature does not cooperate with our plans.

Fiber Network

Residential request for service continues to track at a strong pace. We have had some difficulties with a serious illness of one of our staff members that is slowing the team down a bit and making it difficult to meet demand. In order to resolve this issue we are bringing contractors in to enable us to get caught up on drop construction and allow us to focus on installing customers and getting G.Fast up and working.

We are making good progress on G.Fast deployment now that we have received some long awaited software updates from our manufacturer. I hope to have at least one apartment complex deployed by the end of the year.

Urban Renewal District

We are awaiting responses on a request for proposals on construction for this project. Stay tuned for updates.