New Jersey has a broadband issue. A visual example of this disconnect is an FCC map showing the state overrun with red and yellow dots representing unserved and underserved locations. The dots blot out more than two-thirds of New Jersey, leaving only one of 21 counties unblemished. 

Many residents rely on legacy networks that provide slow, expensive coaxial cable service for TV and DSL for internet, even though the U.S. Census population density is 1,263 people per square mile—more than 13 times the national average. 

Un- and underserved

Because New Jersey is among the most densely populated U.S. states, it represents a less-than-typical scenario for federal Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) funds earmarked mostly for rural areas. 

“For us, BEAD is not just about revenue opportunity, it’s about infrastructure being available to us, our friends and family and customers throughout the state,” said Zach Magid, COO of Millennium Communications Group Inc., East Hanover, N.J. “We’ve been doing business in this state for 30 years, and it’s a disgrace that so many people have unreliable or insufficient access to the internet.”

Zach Magid, COO of Millennium Communications Group

New Jersey received more than $263 million in BEAD funding. It has an additional $52 million available for broadband in a capital projects fund. 

“The money will not be sufficient to ensure that nobody is left behind, but I’m hopeful it may be enough of an injection of capital with the right intent to allow those smaller local systems and providers to self-fund for future expansions,” Magid said. 

“While we project BEAD to be a small volume of our work, we see it as extremely important,” Magid said. 

Many New Jersey residents cannot access remote learning, telehealth appointments or government programs and services administered online. 

“The pandemic showed us that internet access is no longer a luxury,” Magid said. “It’s become a necessity.”

Millennium Communications Group has canvassed New Jersey and conducted feasibility studies regarding broadband needs. 

“We know how to design an efficient, scalable system,” Magid said. “The idea is to preserve average revenue per user by value-engineering the network to build, regardless of number of users. The lower the cost, the more subscribers you can impact positively.” 

The need for planning

Along with the Northern New Jersey NECA Chapter and IBEW 827, Millennium is helping to plan New Jersey’s broadband deployment strategies while working with a variety of stakeholders—state and local governments, schools, nonprofits, community organizations, libraries, universities and colleges. 

One bright spot for residents of the Garden State is that the unserved and underserved areas are not far from areas served by robust networks. This gives the state a good chance of connecting greater numbers of people with fewer miles of fiber, conduit and other necessary infrastructure.

“Until now, the majority of our fiber business has been data centers and businesses located in the middle mile,” Magid said. 

The “middle mile” is the broadband infrastructure connecting communities separated by distance. 

“With BEAD funding, we’re getting to the last mile of connection with residential areas,” Magid said.

Successful deployment and sustainability hinges on how the network was designed. 

“It’s how you phase the network to hold capacity and to pass the maximum number of homes,” he said

First-level strategies must connect the greatest number of people, including those with the ability to subscribe and generate use sufficient to sustain additional investment by telecom providers in other areas, Magid said.

The state’s 5-year deployment considers this aspect of future sustainability by delineating middle-income users and community sites—parks, community centers, senior centers, libraries and universities—and urging their inclusion in network designs. 

Rural broadband 

Network design may be even more crucial in rural areas where fewer people are separated by greater distances.

Jeff Beavers, NECA’s executive director of network integration and services, is concerned that without proper planning, BEAD funds will simply run out and many will be left unconnected. 

Jeff Beavers, NECA’s executive director of network integration and services

“There’s plenty of engineering, make-ready work needed—pole prep and change-out, as well as permitting,” Beavers said. “A lot of the funding could just end up going for that.”

A lesser-known solution, all-dielectric self-supporting (ADSS) fiber, placed in the power space, can reduce make-ready work and avoid the crowded communications space on poles, Beavers said.

Jim Hayes, co-founder of the Fiber Optic Association (FOA), Santa Monica, Calif., said Kentucky has managed to mitigate some of the daunting distances.

Jim Hayes, president and co-founder of the Fiber Optic Association

Well in advance of BEAD, Kentucky focused on building middle-mile infrastructure that connects major cities with medium ones and smaller towns. 

Kentucky’s carefully laid groundwork should enable more BEAD dollars to be applied to connecting individual residents living within those communities, Hayes said.

Agricultural uses

“Most people think of rural areas as people living on individual farms, but most farms are big commercial operations run by just a few people. Most rural residents live in small towns,” he said.

That seems about right. The U.S. Census indicated that 206.9 million, about 63% of the U.S. population, lived in incorporated places as of July 1, 2019. And 76% of incorporated areas in the nation claimed fewer than 5,000 residents. Of that group, almost 42% had fewer than 500 people.

Beavers pointed out that, for some time now, the agricultural industry has relied on technologies requiring broadband connections—robotic milking machines, autonomous tractors, telehealth and devices that monitor crops and livestock health conditions. 

“The farms’ need for real-time monitoring and control necessitated broadband use,” Beavers said.

In response to the pandemic, some people moved to rural areas that can only be connected by stringing or burying fiber optic cable over many miles. 

“You have to remember, there is no wireless,” Hayes said. “There are only wireless devices at the end points. Everything is connected by fiber. Regular Wi-Fi goes only short distances.”

Line-of-sight Wi-Fi and cellular can connect rural areas while fiber is being built, but they are much slower, he said.

The training advantage

BEAD project funding requires employing Department of Labor-approved apprentices and journeymen.

“Because internet access has become a necessity, the work must be done correctly,” Beavers said. “A benefit of deploying ADSS in the power space [is that it] better ensures that the work is handled professionally because the training is there.”

The FOA develops industry standards for training and certifying fiber optic technicians. Since its founding in 1995, it has certified more than 97,212 technicians. More are being trained and certified daily, Hayes said. FOA has partnered for decades with the Electrical Training Alliance (ETA), and many JATCs include fiber training as a result.

For line work, the ETA is developing a nationwide fiber optic splicer technician training program inspired by a telecom training program in Alaska, the state with the lowest population density at 1.2 people per square mile. Here, line and inside wire apprentices train at the same facility with fiber splicing technicians. 

The new ETA national training program will teach fiber splicing, terminating and testing to prospective fiber optics technicians and as a supplement for outside journeymen. 

“Quite a few contractors have expressed interest,” said Virgil Melton, director of the ETA’s outside program. “Linemen and line apprentices have pulled fiber for years, and because fiber is getting to be everywhere, they’re now starting to terminate and do splicing.”

Virgil Melton, director of the outside program for the Electrical Training Alliance

ETA aims to make the first semester curriculum available by late August or early fall, Melton said.

“BEAD funding is one of the reasons we are pushing so hard to develop a national telecom training program for the line setting,” Melton said. “There’s plenty of telecom fiber work everywhere, but we want to get out ahead and be prepared for BEAD when everything breaks loose.”

Professional standards and training enable electrical contractors to handle advancements in technology. 

“As fiber counts have increased, technicians, apprentices and journeymen must be trained to create larger bend radiuses to accommodate them,” Hayes said.

“Contractors are also running into situations of having bid with a client that insists the infrastructure has been ‘future-proofed’ and all they need to do is pull the cable,” Beavers said. “Today, a 6,912-fiber cable won’t fit into extra ducts installed 20 years ago, when a 144-fiber cable was considered a high strand count.”

Today’s larger cable diameters and bend radiuses also require consideration of vault sizes, handholes and other apparatus, which may have been sized to old standards for pathways and spaces.

“There’s more to future-proofing than building in extra capacity,” Magid said. “Building in flexibility and maintaining documentation of what exists now will be most important.”

For line contractors, there’s make-ready work and permitting support, augmenting the staff and workload of pole owners, Beavers said.

Many telecom providers such as AT&T, which created fiber construction standards, contract this work out, he said.

New broadband players, such as municipal networks and traditional wireless companies, also outsource construction, engineering and maintenance. 

“Those not doing the fiber work are leaving money on the table,” Hayes said.

Header image: Getty Images / Andrey Suslov