November-December 2011 Newsletter
The Governing Board and Staff of ECFiber wish all citizens of the 23 ECFiber Towns a Happy and Healthy Holiday Season!
NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2011 NEWSLETTER UPDATE:
ECFiber is pleased to announce that we have subscribed our 110th customer, having begun connections at the beginning of September. We are on track to meet our business plan objectives with a one-month delay due to various factors associated with Hurricane Irene. Before the end of the year, ECFiber expects to be able to offer service to customers on the following new routes in Barnard:
- lower part of Stackpole Road
- Bowman Road through Harlow Lane
- Old Hill Road
- Ferndale Road
- Gills Road
- Rhoades Hill/lower part of Rousseau Road off Route 12
Interested customers on these routes should subscribe for service at www.myecifber.net to get on our installation list.
On December 2, ECFiber closed our Phase II capital-raising effort, successfully attracting $300,000 in new investment. These funds will be used to build 10-15 miles of additional routes in Barnard, branching out from the Phase I route. A short extension from East Barnard through Pomfret up Broad Brook Road to Allen Hill Road is also likely to be included. Final decision regarding the new routes will be posted on both websites as soon as pole attachment applications have been made. From that date it can take up to 6 months for “make ready” work to be done by the utilities, and pole attachment licenses issued to us, which enable us to start construction work.
November/December meetings in Strafford, Tunbridge and Vershire are being organized to promote similar efforts for those towns, and an additional meeting for the town of Norwich has been scheduled for early February.
DEALING WITH POWER OUTAGES TO PROTECT TELEPHONE SERVICE:
Note to phone customers: power outages and ECF phone serice
Folks:
Last week Barnard experienced a power outage of about 16 - 20 hours associated with the snow storm that hit our area. As a result most of our telephone customers lost phone service for varying amounts of time. We understand that this can be very disturbing – the loss of critical connectivity, particularly during hazardous weather conditions, is a situation that requires adequate advance preparation. This note is intended to provide some suggestions for maintaining connectivity during adverse weather conditions. Note that even conventional phone service is imperfect: FairPoint customers in rural areas can and do lose service for a number of reasons including the effect of weather on old and/or corroded copper facilities, power outages to service cabinets, faults in the network equipment etc.
The principal reason why ECF customers may lose telephone service is loss of the Internet service to their homes. This can occur for several reasons, one of which is loss of power to the home. To deal with the latter, ECF provides subscribers with back-up batteries that automatically switch on in the event of a power outage. These batteries will last from 6 – 11 hours depending on how much calling a subscriber does during the outage, whether the subscriber is using the Internet for other purposes or allowing her/his computer to “sleep” when not in use, the condition of the battery and the nature of the equipment. After the battery runs out, phone service will be lost until power comes back on or some other source of electricity is found.
The most common back-up for loss of wireline service is temporary reliance on cellphones. However, many locations in ECF territory do not have good cellphone reception. Assuming that cellphone service is not sufficiently reliable to provide back-up to ECF wireline service, there are a number of other options available to our subscribers:
a) ECF can install a secondary battery at an estimated cost of $50 which will provide up to double the life of the principal back-up battery or a larger battery with up to three times the life of the principal back-up battery at an estimated cost of $75.
b) Subscribers can plug the battery into a back-up generator. The cost of this varies enormously: i) if you already have a generator, the extra cost is virtually zero; ii) if you buy one for this purpose only, the smallest and cheapest will do fine. The advantage is that such generators can be used for many other things;
c) you can buy a standard “emergency battery” pack of the kind used for emergency jump-starting a car. These normally have a standard 110 outlet into which the ECF network battery can be plugged. Depending on the size of the battery pack and its condition this could extend the life of the network battery by up to 8 – 24 hours. Alternatively, you can buy a cheap inverter and attach it to a car battery and plug the ECF battery into that. This will have similar effectiveness as the emergency pack.
d) you can subscribe to the bare minimum “dial-tone only” service from FairPoint as an emergency back-up for ECF service. The lowest such service is around $18/month. On the rare occasions when you would use it FairPoint charges by the minute for actual usage so this should only be used for emergencies when ECF service is out. ECF’s low cost unlimited service plus FairPoint’s “dial-tone only” would still be cheaper than FairPoint’s price for service comparable in scope and services to ECF. Such a solution would, of course, be more secure than either ECF or FairPoint by itself.