Want Fiber Internet? Here’s How Metronet Installed It in My Neighborhood

First, a little info about my neighborhood

My house was built in the 1980s, if that tells you anything. Utility poles line up and down the streets, carrying power and coaxial cable lines. The only lines buried on city property are for water and telephone.

My property is a different story. All lines are buried, so nothing aerial connects my house to the nearest utility pole. That’s not the case for all neighborhoods, though—water is the only buried line at my second home across town. AT&T installed aerial fiber lines along the access road behind it. I live in a hurricane zone, so you’d think all lines would be underground, but nope. Nada.

Internet zoning

Spectrum provides cable internet in my neighborhood, while AT&T has telephone service. Neither one has plans to install fiber internet where I live, although both have home fiber internet service in nearby neighborhoods. My wireless internet options include T-Mobile 5G Home Internet and all satellite internet providers.

That said, faster upgrades were never an option until Metronet came to town. We tend to say you can switch internet providers if you’re not satisfied with your current one, but in my case, the only alternative option was to downgrade to satellite or fixed wireless. Plus, AT&T stopped offering DSL internet to my home years ago. Leaving Spectrum wasn’t in the cards for me.

Needless to say, my eyes widened with excitement when I first spotted a Metronet truck during the summer. Finally, some modern internet is coming our way!

Getting the neighborhood ready

I didn’t see the company logo again until later in the fall. Fiber installation appeared to be in full swing. Why not get all up in their business and take some pictures? I can still feel the sand spurs.

For starters, College Road is one of the main arteries in my city. Two lanes run north, and two lanes run south, divided by a wide median. I first spotted Metronet installing fiber along this road using a Ditch Witch vacuum excavator (shown above) and a Ditch Witch directional drill (shown below).

Normally, with fiber internet installations, the directional drill creates narrow tunnels underground. However, Metronet contractors didn’t use either Ditch Witch equipment inside the neighborhood, as you’ll see later.

The orange conduit is used for the main fiber line, and the blue is used to supply fiber to the homes. The ones shown above measure 1.25 inches wide and are as hard as a steel baseball bat (or my boss’s head). Below you’ll see a service box they’ll bury in the ground.

So, with the main fiber lines installed outside the neighborhood, it was time to bring the new connection to homeowners.

Bringing fiber into my neighborhood

Waltmoor, my neighborhood’s main point of entry and exit coming off of College Road, is now part of a 15-mile cross-city walkway connecting a nearby park to the beach. It received an upgrade a few years back: a new sewer system, new sidewalks, and wider lanes, so I knew even then AT&T and Spectrum would never come in and install fiber. After all, ripping out the existing coaxial infrastructure and installing a fiber one would be expensive and drive up customer costs.

So, here we are with Metronet.

As I previously reported, Metronet didn’t use large Ditch Witch equipment to install fiber in the neighborhood. Instead, contractors used the Rotair D185T4I diesel air compressor, shown above, to create tunnels under roads, sidewalks, and along the easements. They connected a piercing tool (mole or rocket, depending on who you ask) to the compressor to create the tunnel. You can feel it “thumping” as it pounds against the soil under your feet.

Since power and coaxial cables are aerial in my part of the neighborhood, AT&T marked its telephone lines prior to Metronet’s arrival, as shown below.

The local water company did the same. The picture below was taken in front of my house further up the street, and you can also see in the top-right corner where Metronet contractors marked the ground for a future trench (which you’ll see later).

Reaching the first corner

CVS sits at the corner where Waltmoor connects to College Road. As you can see below, the orange and blue conduits were already measured and cut, stretching from the stoplight to this first intersection.

Contractors dug up the trenches that led to similar trenches across this first street (shown below). They used the air compressor to create a tunnel under the pavement versus creating a micro trench, as seen with other fiber internet installations.

Converging on my home from the opposite end

Months later, the contractors approached from the other end of Waltmoor. Below, you can see what I assume is the shutoff valve. It sits between the mole/rocket/drill device in the ground and the air compressor parked on the road.

Two conduit spools were parked in the city’s pump house property across from my driveway. Contractors pulled a block’s worth of tubing from each, cut them from the spools, and dragged them to the end of the block.

Rectangular holes, like the ones shown above, were dug every 35 feet (roughly). They’re used to help pull both conduits through the tunnels.

Once the conduits were in place, the holes were filled and covered with a thin layer of hay. Honestly, it doesn’t even look like new fiber lines were installed.

The only real sign of fiber internet for now are the blue conduits sticking out of the ground: one pair sitting between two houses. At the end of the day, the crew buried a block’s worth of conduit on one side of the street.

Here’s a look at the conduits in the trench:

That leads us to the stopping point for this section. Next up: threading the conduits to my property.