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Last week Neil Traver, Northeast Division Manager for Arizona Public Service (APS) made a major announcement addressing those gathered at the Navajo County Mayor’s Summit held in Winslow.
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Traver stated that APS has begun a three-phase project that would provide broadband access to facilitate economic development in Navajo County.
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“In essentially every economic development conversation I’ve had over the last several years, one of the primary concerns that consistently comes up is the limitation of broadband in our region,” explained Traver.
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As a result of those conversations, Traver said his company held discussions and realized they could contribute to economic development by adding additional fibers to the fiber optics APS had already planned to add to their infrastructure throughout the state in order to communicate with its various substations.
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“From Phoenix up to the Verde Substation, or in other words Prescott, we have a fiber build-out already. As part of Phase 1 we’re going to bring in some fiber from Phoenix up to Payson. At the same time, we’re going to move this fiber from Prescott up to Flagstaff.”
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As discussions developed on how to move forward with the project, Traver worked with people such as Dominic Pagliuca, Manager of Network Engineering for APS who was also present at the meeting, to outline a way that the project would move forward.
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“What we were able to do is extend the capacity. Internally for us we have a certain amount of capacity that we need. Instead of just bringing that tiny bit of capacity, what we are going to do is bring in a 432 pair line. What this line does is change the aspect of what we can do with broadband in the future. Essentially it would bring unlimited capacity to the area.
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“I’ve got a 345 KB line that runs from the Pinnacle Peak Substation in Phoenix to my Preacher Canyon Sub Station in Payson. These are the really big, tall structures where you see all the transmission lines. The top two lines that you see on those structures are what you call ‘static neutral.’ They are designed to keep lightning strikes from getting down to our base. What we do, via helicopter, we take one of those strands down and then re-strand that entire line with a new static neutral but the core of that neutral is now fiber. So we run the fiber through there and it’s very reliable. Lightning hits it and no problems, cars aren’t striking it, it’s not buried in the ground where there could be fault issues, things like that.”
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Traver stated that the plan is to have this phase of the work completely built out and in service by this time next year. “The next phase would then be to take it from the Preacher Canyon Substation up to the Cholla Substation (in Joseph City). That would be in 2021, and then in Phase 3 we’re going to take it from Cholla out to Flagstaff to the Coconino Substation. It creates a ring that will provide redundancy.”
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Regarding cost, Traver stated that APS had already planned on doing the project so the costs are minimal to provide greater access. “When we run a line, the cost is 95 percent labor, helicopter, men, replacement. The actual cost of the fiber is minimal, about a dollar a foot.”
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Winslow Mayor Tom McCauley responded to the presentation stating the impact of such an endeavor would be significant to the region. “Rural medicine, we don’t always get the best specialists in the door but this will allow us to meet with them. We can go to our local hospital and through tele-med meet with that specialist, meet with that cardiologist without having to travel to do that. What this is going to do for rural education is going to be nothing less than a miracle. People can sit at home and take classes from Northland Pioneer College without having to leave their homes. It will open up a whole new industry for the community college.”
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“As fiber expands throughout the country we will have less dependence on a hub like Phoenix. Let’s turn these smaller communities into hubs,” stated Pagliuca.
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Traver went on to explain that in conjunction with the APS project, Spark Light, formerly Cable One, will be bringing fiber from the Cholla Substation and building it out to Heber and Forest Lakes. “They can connect with us and have the capacity to serve all of northeastern Arizona, with more fiber than we’ll ever really need.”
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Traver emphasized that although APS will be making broadband accessible to the region, it will still require local carriers and companies to tap into the fiber optics in order to make it available to industry. “I’m not a last mile distributor. The capacity and the data will be there but a third party vendor will have to lease that capacity to get that back out to who needs it.”
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Assistant Navajo County Manager Paul Watson added to the conversation stating, “This has been the big elephant in the room that we’ve been trying to tackle. How to get someone to pay for that. We’ve been doing something with E-rate but that’s for schools and libraries and we’ve had a lot of restrictions with that. The capacity with this is going to be phenomenal.”
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Watson went on to encourage each of the leaders in the room to reach out to current providers and find out if they have opened discussion with APS to see what they are doing to be a part of this development.
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Traver concluded by stating, “Capacity-wise this is really, really going to change things for the region. We’re really excited about doing this and we’re doing this because we care about economic development. We want this part of the state to be successful.”
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