There is a tsunami coming...

When I was a kid, one of the first jobs I got on my own was working at Wendy's. It was for $3.35 an hour (minimum wage when I was a teen) and a miserable experience. I still won't eat the Chili, but that is a whole other conversation.

If you have ever worked in the services industry, I am sure you experienced this...our worst nightmare was when a school bus pulled into the parking lot. We had an announcement we made over the loudspeaker, "grayhound on the lot". It meant we all stopped cleaning or organizing and pulled all resources to the front registers and grills. Sure, you would make great sales numbers, but...those 10-15 minutes are always a nightmare when too many people upset the normal flow of our queue.

With Fiber and other telecom projects coming to a city near you, with all of the Federal Money such as BEAD, GRIP or other state-directed projects, most industry people think the major problems are related to resources, such as fiber, conduit, splicers, or construction crews. While those could limit what companies can do, what most companies fail to realize is WHERE they are going to be working. Rural America is NOT setup to handle such a Tsunami of work.

Background

I had the honor of spending a few years on the Board of Directors for One Call Wyoming, where I represented the telephone companies. This allowed me to experience each and every 'hit' that happened across the state of Wyoming. Now, Wyoming is basically one community, with really long streets, meaning that when one community has an issue, the neighboring ones hear about it through the cowboy communication network...mostly at the bars or churches.

The challenge always was that big companies would come in, call in a locate across the entire community and become shocked when the city would pull the 'oh crap' handle. They couldn't understand why a town like Wamsutter or Evanston could not do a full locate of every utility owned by the city, or why companies couldn't locate resources on location in a day or two to accommodate their last-minute goal. Or maybe, this was done on purpose...confuse and overwhelm. Who really knows?

More recently, while working on a pretty significant FTTH project, I saw numerous small towns in Rural America react similarly when that Bus pulled into the Wendy's parking lot.

First - They were ecstatic that they were going to get fiber.

Second - They became freaked out at all of the utility locates.

Third - When things started to go poorly, they shut everything down.

One town basically said, "Go away, we don't want fiber any longer".

A second told us, "You can build anywhere except where there are public utilities".

It became very clear to me that we need a more concerted effort to educate communities on what could/would/should be happening.

What is going to happen soon?

In most areas, fiber and telecom companies prefer to be in the ground. While more expensive for initial construction, it saves the challenge of dealing with Pole Attach and also protects one from when the hurricane or severe weather event eventually comes, the system is more resilient. But, when you plow, you have to locate all utilities, i.e. the tagline of 'know what's below'.

Yet, some of these towns have not seen any major utility projects for decades. Sure, people call 811 to do a fence or a sprinkler system...sometimes. These cities usually have a person, maybe two, who can look at old paper records on where their city water, sewer, gas, etc...lines are.

What sometimes happens next is chaos and mistakes. Basically, you end up with utilities not properly located and that eventually get struck by a plow or a drill. Next you get:

• Cities get upset having to then tear up roads to fix a water main that they didn't even know was on that street, hence why it wasn't located.
• Residents get upset at fences or sheds, that have lived on utility easements for decades when they get damaged or moved to accommodate the work.
• Companies get overwhelmed by the remediation costs of dealing with hitting so many unmarked utilities and a blame game starts between construction crews, telcos and communities.

The reality is most of these small communities are just not capable of dealing with a major fiber project. Too many data points, too large of an area, too short on time or resources.

What is needed?

The reality here is that some of the money being used to study whether a community should get fiber should also be allocated short term for them to be capable of handling a project at this scale.

I would recommend the following for everyone involved for the next few years to ensure the money spent is effective in providing quality telecom without the scars seen all too often:

Companies

1. Reach out early and discuss the amount of work that is about to happen
2. Research what the community knows about their utilities and how old the data is
3. Include Utilities on the construction applications if at all possible to help ease the burden from the City
4. Offer to assist in the locates, either financially, with resources or technology such as Ground Penetrating Radar

Communities

1. Talk to other communities or industry veterans to understand what is coming
2. Know your own rules and that of your state. What rules can you implement and what fees can you charge for services and application fees?
3. Some communities have no rules and that is just a bad idea. Look at other communities who have been down this road successfully and copy paste their rules if they fit your community needs/goals
4. Ask for time and help. If these companies truly want to be a part of your community and service your citizens, they should be ready, willing and able to assist this process.

State and local Governments

1. Write laws that make sense - don't overly burden one group to ease the other group, otherwise, you could end up being de-prioritized and not see construction for quite some time.
2. Fund community grants to allow for mapping and the ability to locate aging utilities. Some of this stuff was put in 70-100 years ago and trust me, that person is no longer with the city.
3. Set up information databases on where knowledge can be easily found for some of these smaller communities. In towns where the same person might be the Mayor, the City Works Director and the person doing the locate...it becomes critical that they can easily get accurate information to ensure projects run smoothly.
4. Ensure a "Build Once - Built Right" mentality for your communities. All states have a database used for 811 - One Call. Get the data while the data is being created or found in these databases to ensure the technology is capable of decreasing the lack of knowledge for future projects.

Summary

So much is about to happen across these small towns and I fear that without some planning and care, this can quickly get out of hand and companies could waste time, money, and resources. So much of our Country needs better access to the internet and data. By putting in an ounce of effort today to help everyone get through this tsunami of seeing what is underground, a pound of savings will go a long way to get more of the people on the web.

Thanks for reading, if you have any feedback or thoughts on what you think about ability for small towns to locate their utilities, please leave a comment or reach out. Cheers!