What to Expect with Fiber Construction:   

The team at Canadian Fiber Optics has been hard at work trying to find ways to build fiber infrastructure in rural Canadian communities. Although it is true there are many ways that an ISP can get internet to your home – fiber infrastructure stands alone as the best and most affordable way to ensure that you never have an internet problem again.  

To prepare our communities for their digital future, massive infrastructure upgrades are needed. We place brand new fiber optic infrastructure (usually, buried). Unfortunately, even in the best weather conditions, installing new underground infrastructure is hard and dangerous work.

Here are what Our Communities may be able to expect.

Boundaries 

Although we want to build EVERYWHERE, it’s very important that we define clear boundaries of where we in the community we are building. This is typically within town or hamlet boundaries, but exceptions do exist.  

It Can Get Messy 

As we say in Canada, there’s two seasons – construction and winter. For better or worse, we build year-round in an effort to connect you even faster. This keeps our crews gainfully employed, but also helps us connect more people in shorter time. It should come as no surprise that winter construction can be slower and requires extra care to execute properly.  

Although spring brings better weather, the ground is usually wet and soft – this poses a problem for our underground construction. More often than not, we create a little bit of a mess in the springtime that we then remediate back to previous condition later in the season. Summer and fall construction seasons are ideal and bring fantastic production to connecting homes and businesses. 

Flagging and Safety 

Before we begin constructing in your area, our communities’ residents will see flags begin to pop up all around the area. These flags are incredibly important as it tells the construction crew where important utility infrastructure, like gas and electric, is located. If you see these flags, please ensure that you do not touch or remove them from the ground. If a crew is unable to see a flag or the utilities below it could cause serious damage to your utilities or cause harm to the crew! If you would like to let us know about private utilities on your property where we will be building, please call our main line and let our team know. For more information on locates, visit UtilitySafety.ca. 

Remediation   

As previously mentioned, we usually build underground construction, which means we dig holes and small trenches for the fiber lines to run down! Although we deploy directional drills and vibratory plowing equipment that reduces the amount of soil turned, we can still create a mess. We always try our best to remediate anything effected by our work and ensure that it will return to its healthiest form in suitable time. 

Our team will often wait for the soil can properly settle – at that point, we set the earth to final grade and plant new seed for your lawn to regrow to its previous health! It is a small price we need to pay to keep construction moving so we can continue to connect homes and businesses as fast as possible!

Rights-of Way

We will typically design and build all our “middle mile” or “transport” fiber infrastructure on road allowances. This is sometimes referred to as an “utility easement” or a “Right-Of-Way”. These are just utility corridors often located in road ditches, back alleys, back yards, or sometimes in your front yard (alongside the curb or sidewalk).

Access Agreements

To get permission to build to your house, we require property owners to sign an access agreement. This is sometimes done through the sales agreement or separately.  If you live in Sturgeon County and need to sign an access agreement, click HERE 

 

We cant wait to connect the rest of rural Canada – if you have questions about us, call our main line at 1-888-263-2947