When Surf Broadband Solutions installs fiber-optic broadband, it builds more than a quality infrastructure; it builds community. Director of Enterprise Sales Steve Carender believes that fiber is a great equalizer for smaller communities, giving them the technological advantages of a larger city.
“Regardless of the economic status of a neighborhood, we build out all homes and businesses in the community and offer next-generation fiber-optic service, which allows people to work from home with better connectivity and, of course, better 4K streaming,” Carender said.
Not only does fiber improve connectivity, but it also increases home value by approximately 3%. Carender compared this boosted value to adding a fireplace or a sunroom.
Leveling the playing field for smaller cities through the implementation of fiber attracts new businesses and residents, making it not just a plus, but a necessity for community growth.
“Fiber in the ground not only serves the existing businesses, but it makes the land and those developments more attractive to new businesses,” Carender said. “It’s like having rail or water or electrical service. You have to have the infrastructure capacity in order to service large organizations and increase their competitive advantage.”
From telehealth, to nanorobotics, to even road traffic, fiber gives cities the ability to streamline a comprehensive list of essential community resources.
“Having a smart and engaged city is beyond just having broadband at your home,” Carender said. “It’s about having a digitally-enabled city where the internet runs things like traffic control, metering, and eventually smart cars. This is all based on the infrastructure that underlies that. A lot of that is delivered wirelessly, of course, but the infrastructure has to interconnect with a network, and that's the underlying fiber optics that we're placing in the ground.”
A fiber baseline layer is needed to interconnect devices and provide opportunities for new developments. While technology is constantly evolving, Carender revealed that fiber has capacity to handle this growth.
“I always think in terms of the future with the capacity of the piece of glass that we bring into the house, which is fiber optic glass and is essentially unlimited. For the foreseeable future, there's not going to be a new technology or anything like this,” Carender said. “This is like bringing electrical service or water into your home; you're not going to have to get a new type of connection anytime in the future.”
Fiber’s ability to support the future moves beyond new technology and includes employment opportunities that are not yet on the radar. Carender recalled that most of the jobs he worked after graduating college did not even exist when he was in high school, and he expects this trend to continue.
“It's not like fiber optic is not something that a town like La Porte needs to wait 10 years for until somebody catches on,” Carender said. “It needs to happen now in order to prepare for the future because there are countless possibilities coming up with digital manufacturing and advanced manufacturing capabilities.”
For more information about Surf Broadband Solutions, visit www.surfbroadband.com.
