(Dec. 22, 2016) After FTS Fiber and ThinkBig Networks made a brief pitch on Dec. 5 to bring gigabyte Internet in Ocean Pines, promising to connect the association police department to county police in exchange for an easement to lay “dark fiber,” many residents were left with more questions than answers.
For one, the meeting, in front of the board of directors and a small in the audience and a handful more watching online, was touted as being nothing more than an introduction – a preliminary step. However, promotional materials distributed during the meeting seemed to say otherwise and that week ThinkBig’s website, www.thinkbignets.com, included a blurb on its homepage that read “Coming Soon to Sudlersville, MD, Church Hill, MD, Centreville, MD, Ocean Pines, MD, Ocean City, MD, and more!”
During the meeting, representatives from FTS said they had already “engaged” in discussions with nearby Berlin. Asked about that discussion, Berlin Town Administrator Laura Allen said, on Dec. 7, “This is the first I’m hearing about FTS.”
FTS reps claimed to be “building route miles from Virginia Beach to Delmarva, up to Baltimore,” during the Ocean Pines meeting. “We’re going to be coming through here anyway with a backbone. We get some value by putting a few additional customers onto that backbone.”
Later, they backtracked from that and said FTS was a member of the Maryland Broadband Cooperative (MBC) and “that’s how we can get connectivity to the backbone.”
After that, the rep again seemed to take credit for the “backbone,” saying, “putting in a backbone” was “part of our investment strategy.”
FTS Marketing Manager Blake Hargest clarified some points of the meeting in an email interview on Dec. 7.
“ThinkBig Networks has come to FTS Fiber looking to install fiber in Ocean Pines because they see great opportunity for expanding their gigabit internet service in the community,” he said. “Once the fiber is installed, FTS will lease the fiber to ThinkBig Networks to bring gigabit internet service to the residents.”
The installation itself, he said, would be “contracted out.”
Hargest estimated work to connect the roughly 8,400 homes in Ocean Pines to fiber would take 12 months.
“As part of FTS Fiber’s long-haul backbone, we are building past the Ocean Pines area,” he said. “Ocean Pines has no direct effect on where we build in and around the area, the idea to install fiber in the Ocean Pines community is simply just for Ocean Pines to leverage the high-speed backbone that we are already installing throughout the Delmarva.”
FTS is already under contract to lay fiber in Kent County, which is the smallest county in Maryland by population, and is apparently in the process of laying a network of dark fiber there.
On Dec. 14 Hargest added, “Queen Anne’s County issued an RFP for a fiber optic build a couple of months ago and we have an interview with the county next week to discuss our proposal.”
“The backbone that was referred to during the [Ocean Pines] meeting is a new fiber backbone that FTS Fiber is installing along the Delmarva Peninsula,” he said during the second interview. “Maryland Broadband Cooperative is our partner in providing access into government institutions and providing diversity to our customers for our network connectivity.”
Former Worcester County Commissioner Virgil Shockley made affordable and available broadband his major platform while in office. He also sits on the board of MBC.
Shockley said MBC used federal funding to run a “backbone” of fiber from Wallops Island, Virginia that runs down Route 113 and through Hardwire in Pocomoke, the University of Maryland Eastern Shore in Princess Anne and Salisbury University in Salisbury.
That backbone also runs through Berlin and extends north from Cambridge to Elkton, also running to Annapolis and Baltimore as well as to Oakland and Keysers Ridge in the Northwest corner of the state.
“This is the backbone, but because of how the cooperative is setup we cannot do what is called ‘the last mile,’” Shockley said. “The fiber is actually sitting there on Route 113 … it’s already there.
“A company like [FTS] would look at buying what they call ‘dark fiber,’” Shockley continued. “Of what’s already in place running up Route 113, they would connect into … what they call a point of presence.”
Atlantic General Hospital, for instance, connects into the MBC backbone in a similar fashion.
“We, as Maryland Broadband, have what we call members,” he said. “We basically will work with anybody. If you are a hospital [like] AGH and you want broadband, we’ll sit down and we’ll draw up and we’ll tell you what it’s going to cost and so on and so forth.”
He said the three questions MBC generally asks its co-op members are “what do you need now, what do you need later and how much can you afford?”
“I would be ecstatic – ecstatic – if a company came along and wanted to hook up Worcester County and have the ability to go wireless, have the ability where everybody can flip open a laptop, just like they have the ability to open their phones and use it.”
Shockley added that “it’s great” that all ninth graders in the county receive laptops, but that there are many places – including Newark – where there are no Internet connections.
Asked exactly why FTS would invest a reported $10-$15 million to connect thousands of homes in Ocean Pines – a market larger companies like Verizon have long eschewed – Shockley said “because they’re going to make money on installing the stuff afterward.”
“If you do that, this is not wireless – this is actually wire-to-wire, old-school in-the-ground wiring like your telephone. You get great coverage. You don’t get knocked off, you don’t have to worry about a satellite in a hurricane or anything else like that, but it’s expensive and people cut it,” Shockley said. “It’s not that you put it in the ground once … it’s not just the cost putting it in the ground – it’s the cost of maintaining it and keeping it up. That’s where the money has to come in.”
He added that there could be other factors involved, including attracting neighboring communities, namely Ocean City.
“This is a show and tell – see what we can do,” Shockley said.
He also said there could be tax credits available for running to neighboring communities dubbed “underserved rural areas.”
Maryland Broadband Vice President and Public Affairs Director Tyler C. Patton confirmed his group has met with FTS, but said he did not know “what FTS has built or exactly what they are planning to build” in terms of a backbone.
He said he was aware of the FTS operations in Kent County and talks with Queen Anne’s County.
“They have reached out to us about our assets in Kent County and trying to utilize them to cut down on their building necessities,” Patton said. “I know we’re in discussions with them about how we can be helpful in Kent County, and to be fair, in Queen Anne’s County or Worcester County or in any county they have an interest in doing business in.”
As for his guess as to what the long-term financial gain of the project in Ocean Pines would be, Patton said that “depends on what their business model is.”
“Internet service provider companies usually build fiber and then sell … to link off of that fiber and then sell a ‘lit’ service off of that fiber,” he said. “I can’t say that anybody would build into Ocean Pines and not build out into Ocean City or into Berlin or in Snow Hill because it just makes business sense to do that.
“Laying from Salisbury to Cambridge is the expensive part,” Patton added. “Laying from Salisbury into a neighborhood is the easier part. Once they build their main trunk line, wherever that’s going to be, it’s easier to build what we call a lateral off of that trunk line and then go into serve somebody.
“I think FTS sees a value of expanding their network across the Eastern Shore,” Patton said. “Whether it’s Ocean Pines or Ocean City or Kent County – I think FTS sees inherent value that if they start building some place they’ll be able to expand their reach, wherever they happen to want to go.”
For one, the meeting, in front of the board of directors and a small in the audience and a handful more watching online, was touted as being nothing more than an introduction – a preliminary step. However, promotional materials distributed during the meeting seemed to say otherwise and that week ThinkBig’s website, www.thinkbignets.com, included a blurb on its homepage that read “Coming Soon to Sudlersville, MD, Church Hill, MD, Centreville, MD, Ocean Pines, MD, Ocean City, MD, and more!”
During the meeting, representatives from FTS said they had already “engaged” in discussions with nearby Berlin. Asked about that discussion, Berlin Town Administrator Laura Allen said, on Dec. 7, “This is the first I’m hearing about FTS.”
FTS reps claimed to be “building route miles from Virginia Beach to Delmarva, up to Baltimore,” during the Ocean Pines meeting. “We’re going to be coming through here anyway with a backbone. We get some value by putting a few additional customers onto that backbone.”
Later, they backtracked from that and said FTS was a member of the Maryland Broadband Cooperative (MBC) and “that’s how we can get connectivity to the backbone.”
After that, the rep again seemed to take credit for the “backbone,” saying, “putting in a backbone” was “part of our investment strategy.”
FTS Marketing Manager Blake Hargest clarified some points of the meeting in an email interview on Dec. 7.
“ThinkBig Networks has come to FTS Fiber looking to install fiber in Ocean Pines because they see great opportunity for expanding their gigabit internet service in the community,” he said. “Once the fiber is installed, FTS will lease the fiber to ThinkBig Networks to bring gigabit internet service to the residents.”
The installation itself, he said, would be “contracted out.”
Hargest estimated work to connect the roughly 8,400 homes in Ocean Pines to fiber would take 12 months.
“As part of FTS Fiber’s long-haul backbone, we are building past the Ocean Pines area,” he said. “Ocean Pines has no direct effect on where we build in and around the area, the idea to install fiber in the Ocean Pines community is simply just for Ocean Pines to leverage the high-speed backbone that we are already installing throughout the Delmarva.”
FTS is already under contract to lay fiber in Kent County, which is the smallest county in Maryland by population, and is apparently in the process of laying a network of dark fiber there.
On Dec. 14 Hargest added, “Queen Anne’s County issued an RFP for a fiber optic build a couple of months ago and we have an interview with the county next week to discuss our proposal.”
“The backbone that was referred to during the [Ocean Pines] meeting is a new fiber backbone that FTS Fiber is installing along the Delmarva Peninsula,” he said during the second interview. “Maryland Broadband Cooperative is our partner in providing access into government institutions and providing diversity to our customers for our network connectivity.”
Former Worcester County Commissioner Virgil Shockley made affordable and available broadband his major platform while in office. He also sits on the board of MBC.
Shockley said MBC used federal funding to run a “backbone” of fiber from Wallops Island, Virginia that runs down Route 113 and through Hardwire in Pocomoke, the University of Maryland Eastern Shore in Princess Anne and Salisbury University in Salisbury.
That backbone also runs through Berlin and extends north from Cambridge to Elkton, also running to Annapolis and Baltimore as well as to Oakland and Keysers Ridge in the Northwest corner of the state.
“This is the backbone, but because of how the cooperative is setup we cannot do what is called ‘the last mile,’” Shockley said. “The fiber is actually sitting there on Route 113 … it’s already there.
“A company like [FTS] would look at buying what they call ‘dark fiber,’” Shockley continued. “Of what’s already in place running up Route 113, they would connect into … what they call a point of presence.”
Atlantic General Hospital, for instance, connects into the MBC backbone in a similar fashion.
“We, as Maryland Broadband, have what we call members,” he said. “We basically will work with anybody. If you are a hospital [like] AGH and you want broadband, we’ll sit down and we’ll draw up and we’ll tell you what it’s going to cost and so on and so forth.”
He said the three questions MBC generally asks its co-op members are “what do you need now, what do you need later and how much can you afford?”
“I would be ecstatic – ecstatic – if a company came along and wanted to hook up Worcester County and have the ability to go wireless, have the ability where everybody can flip open a laptop, just like they have the ability to open their phones and use it.”
Shockley added that “it’s great” that all ninth graders in the county receive laptops, but that there are many places – including Newark – where there are no Internet connections.
Asked exactly why FTS would invest a reported $10-$15 million to connect thousands of homes in Ocean Pines – a market larger companies like Verizon have long eschewed – Shockley said “because they’re going to make money on installing the stuff afterward.”
“If you do that, this is not wireless – this is actually wire-to-wire, old-school in-the-ground wiring like your telephone. You get great coverage. You don’t get knocked off, you don’t have to worry about a satellite in a hurricane or anything else like that, but it’s expensive and people cut it,” Shockley said. “It’s not that you put it in the ground once … it’s not just the cost putting it in the ground – it’s the cost of maintaining it and keeping it up. That’s where the money has to come in.”
He added that there could be other factors involved, including attracting neighboring communities, namely Ocean City.
“This is a show and tell – see what we can do,” Shockley said.
He also said there could be tax credits available for running to neighboring communities dubbed “underserved rural areas.”
Maryland Broadband Vice President and Public Affairs Director Tyler C. Patton confirmed his group has met with FTS, but said he did not know “what FTS has built or exactly what they are planning to build” in terms of a backbone.
He said he was aware of the FTS operations in Kent County and talks with Queen Anne’s County.
“They have reached out to us about our assets in Kent County and trying to utilize them to cut down on their building necessities,” Patton said. “I know we’re in discussions with them about how we can be helpful in Kent County, and to be fair, in Queen Anne’s County or Worcester County or in any county they have an interest in doing business in.”
As for his guess as to what the long-term financial gain of the project in Ocean Pines would be, Patton said that “depends on what their business model is.”
“Internet service provider companies usually build fiber and then sell … to link off of that fiber and then sell a ‘lit’ service off of that fiber,” he said. “I can’t say that anybody would build into Ocean Pines and not build out into Ocean City or into Berlin or in Snow Hill because it just makes business sense to do that.
“Laying from Salisbury to Cambridge is the expensive part,” Patton added. “Laying from Salisbury into a neighborhood is the easier part. Once they build their main trunk line, wherever that’s going to be, it’s easier to build what we call a lateral off of that trunk line and then go into serve somebody.
“I think FTS sees a value of expanding their network across the Eastern Shore,” Patton said. “Whether it’s Ocean Pines or Ocean City or Kent County – I think FTS sees inherent value that if they start building some place they’ll be able to expand their reach, wherever they happen to want to go.”