Winter Park considering fast Internet network

City ponders building fiber optic ‘backbone’

WINTER PARK — With speeds much faster than those offered by most providers, a fiber-optic network could power the Internet in this city’s buildings and possibly even reach into homes someday.

A task force set up by Mayor Steve Leary is looking into whether the city should build a fiber optic “backbone,” which would connect the 17 municipal buildings with speeds reaching or surpassing a gigabit per second.

Such speeds could make emails and other communications instant. The fiber network, which would be underground, could also run potential smart parking, streetlights and other improvements officials have discussed. It would also allow a user to download a full-length movie in less than two minutes, according to a Google Fiber fact sheet.

Thus far, the group has balked at the estimated $28 million cost to lay enough fiber to wire the network to homes, though some members have mentioned gaug-

ing the interest of residents. The majority appear to favor the backbone that would cost about $4 million.

“When you talked about ... fiber 10 years ago, it was hard for people to see the future; now the future is here, and we’ve got to do it,” said Winter Park’s Information Technology director Parsram Rajaram, who is working with the task force. “Fiber is essential in my view.”

Rajaram said the backbone would take about two years to build and would give the city the ability to perhaps expand it in the future to residents, Rajaram said.

The task force is expected to take a few more months before presenting city commissioners with concrete costs and alternatives.

Winter Park isn’t alone in this hyper-speed Internet venture. UCF professor Axel Schülzgen, who has done research on fiber optic cables for more than a decade, said people around the globe are putting more than 240,000 miles of fiber into the ground annually, about the distance from the Earth to the moon.

Nationally, cities like Chattanooga, Tenn., and Santa Monica, Calif., have a fiber network that residents can tap into for regular Internet service. Orange County Public Schools participating in the digital curriculum also have gigabit speeds at their fingertips, a district spokeswoman said.

Eatonville-based HostDime chose the site of its new data center on Wymore Road because it’s less than a mile from what CEO Manny Vivar calls the “largest concentration” of fiber from Sanford to Kissimmee, which allows greater access for his data-infrastructure company.

He said fiber has limitless capabilities when it comes to bandwidth and speed, and 1 gigabit speeds are only the start of its capabilities. Better routers can allow the same cable to provide accelerated speeds, he said.

“Fiber today can run an average of 100 gigabit, which is 1,000 times faster than your average Internet at home, if you’re assuming average is 10 megabit,” Vivar said.

Winter Springs is hooked up to Seminole County’s fiber, and officials say it’s been an improvement over its copper-wire system it previously used. Information Services director Joanne Dalka said the copper would frequently be struck by lightning, which knocked out service and damaged hardware.

“Most of our major buildings are connected via fiber,” Dalka said. “It connects our phones and computers to our network … it’s fast and secure.”

Security is an attractive feature to Rajaram, whose job includes warding off potential cyber attacks on the city’s electric and water utilities. Because fiber experiences less loss than copper wires, and its lines would run directly from point to point, it’s easier to defend communications and information from intrusion, he said.

“Fiber as far as I know … cannot be tapped right now,” Rajaram said. “Think about it like a castle with one door or a castle with multiple doors. Which is easier to protect?”

Some Winter Park residents, such as John Deeb, already have fiber from Century Link, but the company mostly provides service to small businesses in the area, a spokeswoman said.

Deeb owns an Orlando production company and said he regularly uploads large video and photo files through the fiber wired into his Comstock Avenue home. It’s a noticeable uptick in speeds from the copper service provided to his downtown Orlando studio.

Task force members are weighing whether fiber will be relevant into the future before they decide how much, if any, investment is worth making.

Vivar said it will play a key role in connectivity and technology moving forward.

“When you’re laying fiber, it’s an investment for easily 100 years. It’s not going to be a depreciating asset,” Vivar said.

“I think in the future, we’re going to have holographic teleconferences … that’s not possible with that the density and sustainability of fiber.”

“When you talked about ... fiber 10 years ago, it was hard for people to see the future; now the future is here, and we’ve got to do it.” Winter Park’s Information Technology director Parsram Rajaram