Getting Your Neighborhood Ready for Fiber
It’s happening…your neighborhood has been chosen as the next Greenlight district! So, what comes next? Well to get your district ready for Greenlight, a process referred to as “Make Ready” must happen to prepare utility poles for a new attachment. Utility poles are usually owned by local government, utility companies, or a combination of entities, all of which Greenlight needs to work with to start attaching our fiber to the poles.
Steps to Make Ready
STEP 1
Our team maps out which utility poles are needed to provide a district service, then we send out a request for permission for each pole. This is a lengthy process involving many governmental regulations, including construction, environmental, financial, labor, and telecommunications regulations.
STEP 2
Pole owners determine if there is room for anything new and rule out any safety issues. The cost of moving cables is also determined. The maintenance of nearby trees may be an example of safety concerns. Before Make Ready work can begin tree trimming might need to occur (any tree trimming work is governed by official guidelines).
STEP 3
Once any safety issues have been resolved, every entity with cable on that pole must send a worker to move wires and make space for our new attachment. This includes both power and electricity providers and any telecommunications providers. Under federal law, lines on utility poles must be spaced a certain distance apart from each other. Sometimes contractors will get permission to move other telecommunications lines to be more efficient.
STEP 4
Only once the above step is complete, can Greenlight send our construction team to attach our fiber to that pole. This does not involve running fiber to individual homes yet. Upon connecting fiber to the utility poles, our team splices and tests the different cables to our network equipment. When that’s done, we can begin running fiber to the outside of homes who have placed an order!
