Maximizing Home Connectivity:
The Imperative for Contractors to Include Communications Conduit Installation
Contractors building new developments, and even single homes continually fail to recommend that communications conduit be installed inside open trench for facilities. With the national initiative to extend fiber optic Internet to every home, and the dramatic uptick in homeowners working from home, Internet providers continue to take the heat because a new house wasn’t built with communications conduit.Once the lawn is laid, the sprinklers involved, and the concrete pathand driveway are laid the homeowner is ready to soon settle into theirnew home. It is then that they ask how to get fiber optic Internet fromthe pole outside of their house at the passing power poles. That iswhen they realize that the Internet provider asks for access to the laidconduit to the home. When it’s revealed that it was never put in whilethe original trench was open, the homeowner will be furious. TheInternet company will immediately point to the Contractor who shouldhave installed it along side of power.
The Contractor will quote a price to dig up the lawn, sprinklers, andrepave that will infuriate the owner. Only one person looks bad here,the Contractor for not initially suggesting the simple installation ofthe conduit. Some still believe that the phone company direct buryphone line is the answer, it’s not, in most cases the phone companycannot deliver adequate speeds. A few point to boring under thelandscaping at a cost of 10 times what it would have been to simplyinstall conduit.
It’s time for Contractors to realize that the Internet is as essentialto a homeowner as power, and to include a quote to lay conduit from theclosest power pole or fiber vault at the street into the house on theoriginal bid. Even if fiber optic cable isn’t currently on thehomeowner’s street, it will be soon, count on it.Forbes MercyPresident – Washington Broadband, INC
