Construction begins on CL Tel fiber optic network expansion

Construction began Monday on a CL Tel fiber optic network project that will give over 530 more Clear Lake residents and businesses high speed Gigabit Internet service.

Gigabit Internet provides Internet speeds that are up to over 100 times faster than the typical download speed.  With the completion of this section, 90 percent of Clear Lake and all Ventura businesses and residences will have fiber optic access. Remaining residences currently have access to high speed Internet of 50x10 megabytes per second with a goal of having 100 percent Gigabit access by 2019.

Local city and economic development officials have applauded the fiber network expansion as an economic development tool which will help recruit new businesses and retain existing businesses. A greater number of businesses and industries require this kind of high speed communications infrastructure in making a decision to locate in a community as they see it no different than access to roads, railways, water and sanitary sewer, officials said.

  Businesses can be more productive with the high speed Internet, said CL Tel CEO Tom Lovell.  This means faster data transmission between other facilities, speedier credit card transactions, clearer video conferences and webinars and better collaboration with workers off-site.  The higher speeds provide more flexibility for both small and large businesses to work on the go, and they allow access to next generation services.

“A fiber optics network provides the broadband infrastructure that is essential to our community’s and our country’s economic success,” Lovell said.  “We want our local businesses to thrive and our residential customers to have a great communications and entertainment experience at home. ”

It’s also an important key to attracting more families to Clear Lake and Ventura.

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The high speeds for residents make it possible to work from home, use multiple devices at the same time, stream Netflix and YouTube “buffer-free” and download large graphics files quickly.

While a fiber-to-the-home network is initially more expensive to construct, fiber optics provide a more secure, virtually unlimited capacity for data, voice and video services.  Wireless services, although less expensive to deploy, have a limited bandwidth capacity and some security issues.  Ultimately, fiber optics provide a backbone infrastructure to integrate all high speed Internet, interactive TV and “smart home” uses like energy efficiency and home security, better shared information and collaboration.

Contractors began construction Monday in the area roughly bounded by South 3rd Street east to South 14th Street between 2nd Avenue South and 12th Avenue South including the area around Clear Creek School.  The crew will next work on an area that stretches from South Shore Drive to South 8th Street between 17th Avenue South and State Park, including the Stone Cliff Addition and the Sanitary District facility.  Construction work is being done with boring equipment, so there is minimal impact to roadways and lawns.

Customers have been contacted regarding the upgrade project which is provided at no cost to them.  Any non-customers who live within this year’s project areas and would like the service should call CL Tel at 357-2111 or 1-800-641-6201 at their earliest convenience.

  CL Tel was one of the early providers of fiber optics in Iowa, installing its first fiber optical network in 1989 to transmit all long distance calls. Other fiber optics projects have methodically been deployed throughout the years in Clear Lake and Ventura, starting with building the major networks and concluding with extension to individual businesses and homes.

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