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Alliance crews prepare to bury cable for Internet fiber to home

Lead Summary
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By
Mavis Fodness

Five repurposed equipment huts were lifted into place last week as crews gear up for the $14 million broadband Internet service project in Rock County.
The huts located in or near Jasper, Hardwick, Magnolia (2) and Beaver Creek arrived from various locations on semitrailers, and a crane was used to lift and place the huts on new concrete foundations.
Alliance Communications in Garretson, South Dakota, is leading the construction project.
Andy Hulcher, technical supervisor with Alliance, supervised the structures going into place. The service huts will house equipment that, when connected, will form a fiber cable ring. From the ring, individual connections will be made, he said.
By purchasing the previously used tornado-proof huts, the project has already saved money.
“They are so crazy expensive,” Hulcher said.
New prices for the 4-inch-thick walled and steel-roofed huts would have averaged from $80,000 to $100,000 each.
A crane was used to lift all five structures, weighing from 42,000 to 56,000 pounds each, into place.
While two huts have already been refurbished for use as Internet hubs, three will undergo the process as workers begin burying the main fiber-optic cable next month. Work to connect the hubs and bring fiber-to-the-premise service to customers will take the rest of this year to complete.
High-speed Internet service could be available in early fall if there are no delays.
 “If we have a good April and May, they (contractors) could get a good start,” Hulcher said. “It will depend on the weather.”
Some of the 554 miles of fiber-optic cable has already arrived at the central storage area in Luverne.
Work on the main fiber line to connect each of the huts together will begin first.
Current plans have several crews from Michel’s Corporation from Brownsville, Wisconsin, burying cable at the same time.
Crews will begin in the Jasper area with one crew moving south to Beaver Creek while another heads east to Hardwick. They will meet at the hubs near Magnolia, Hulcher said.
Work on the main fiber line is expected to take almost two months to complete.
“Then crews will come back and take fiber to the homes,” Hulcher added.
According to stipulations from the state of Minnesota, Alliance has until June 2017 to complete all installations.
“The plan for fiber construction is to have the bulk of the fiber plowing completed in the fall and some light cleanup after that which might carry over to the spring of 2017,” Hulcher said.

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