Want Fiber Internet? Here’s How Metronet Installed It on My Street

One step closer to fiber

Now I had a good excuse to be all up in the contractors’ business because they were digging, eating, and leaving ugly tire treads in my yard (sigh). They were probably sick of me at this point since I had been following them for the last several months. But hats off to these folks who worked in the bitter cold and kindly pointed out that I needed a jacket and some shoes.

The trench shown above is roughly two feet deep and located near the stopsign mounted in the easement on my property. A similar trench is located across the street. They used the mole—a Metronet rep called it a “rocket,” so we’ll go with that—attached to an air compressor to burrow a tunnel under the road. These two trenches are where the conduits cross under the street—there’s no microtrenching involved. A service box was installed across the street as well.

The trenches are ten feet inward from the sidewalk. Notice in the picture above how they ran the fiber conduits under my oak tree versus going around it. It made me a little nervous, given how roots can cause $2,000+ of damage to water lines. (Been there, done that.)

But once everything was installed and they moved on down the road, I stole a piece of blue conduit and was amazed about how hard it was. It’s a high-density polyethylene conduit manufactured by Blue Diamond, measuring 1.25 inches wide.

Although the contractors dug some trenches, most were done using the Yanmar ViO35 shown above. It was brutally cold outside, but there I was, standing with my neighbor in his driveway, taking pics. Again, one of the crewmen grinned at my Peanuts Christmas socks and told me to put on some shoes.

Rocketing through my yard

Below, you’ll see the rocket contraption used to create the tunnels. It’s connected to the air compressor, and it pounds its way through the soil. Imagine digging a hole using a giant Philips screwdriver or a jackhammer sideways. I get the rocket analogy, though. Looks like we could launch it into space. Or use it as a giant touchscreen stylus.

The contractors actually used two moles simultaneously in my yard. As you can see below, one drilled to the right toward the street corner, and one drilled left under my sidewalk and toward a minor utility pole standing on the line between my yard and my neighbor’s property.

Once the tunnel to the street corner was complete, they turned the rocket around and dug a tunnel under my tree. They tunneled from one end of the property to the other in no time flat.

Here’s a shot of the rocket contraption at work:

The aerial power and coaxial lines cross the street and enter my property at the utility pole. Both come down the pole and run underground to my house. As you can see below, the Metronet contractors didn’t come close to any of the buried electrical and coax lines, although the conduits were buried close to the water meter. The red spray paint on the ground is where the power company marked my buried power line.

Pulling the conduits

Once the contractors created the tunnels, they used the air compressor to “rocket” multiple strands of silver rope from one trench to another. After that, they bound the two conduits together with netting (which reminds me of a Chinese finger trap), connected the ropes to them, and pulled the conduits through the tunnels. They also threaded what appeared to be a thin orange PVC-coated tracer wire to locate the buried conduits later.

The picture below shows the contractors in my neighbor’s yard using ropes to pull the conduits through the tunnels. They usually pulled them by hand, although it looked like they were having issues, so they used the Yanmar ViO35 instead (which is also used to pack the filled trenches). All that conduit slithered around in my yard like monster anacondas as the contractors wrangled and pulled them down the cold, dark passages.

Meanwhile, two houses down, I could see where they continued to drill tunnels down the street, branched off to thread the conduits under the street, and built the fiber infrastructure on the other side. Ultimately, they created an “H” design of sorts on my block.

Everything I saw got me curious about how all these lines network together. If orange was the main fiber line and blue fed the houses, how did all of it tie together? Though a Metronet rep wasn’t around to answer, I spotted a new service box three doors down from my house. Presumably, the main orange lines connect these service boxes together. The blue lines are daisy-chained between the service boxes, feeding each house. While optical is a mostly passive technology, the service boxes are normally installed close to power.

So, it should work something like this:

Spectrum vs. Metronet: Not a hard choice to make

Spectrum probably isn’t happy to see Metronet’s fiber connection bump up next to theirs, as shown in the picture below. But let’s get real here. I pay Spectrum $109.99 monthly for a 600Mbps cable internet connection, while Metronet is offering me a 2,000Mbps symmetrical fiber connection for roughly the same price when my service enters its fourth year. Here are the monthly prices Metronet is offering at my address:

So, why, oh, why would I stick with Spectrum? I even get a $100 Amazon.com gift card to boot if I choose any of the three gigabit plans. Yes, please!

When I took the picture shown above, the contractors had moved further down the street. I expected they would use the next two or three days to finish both sides of my block and then move on to the next one. And I was correct: two days top to finish my block.

Just for kicks, here’s the conduit I stole. It was going in the trash anyway, so why not swipe it? It’ll make for a good blunt weapon.

Finally, Metronet doesn’t leave outdoor fiber connectors sticking out of the ground like Spectrum’s coaxial cabling. Metronet’s two connectors for my and my neighbor’s homes are sealed up in a small utility box in the ground, as shown below. This box will eventually be the starting point for the fiber line connecting to my house.

Okay, so where’s the dang fiber?

Everything I’ve reported thus far only pertains to the conduits, service boxes, and shared utility boxes like the one picture above. A Metronet rep parked across the street in his warm truck said they wouldn’t inject the fiber optics for another month.

That said, I’ll be back to show how the fiber optics are installed in the conduits. Same bat time. Same bat channel.