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Engineering firm for fiber to home project will be selected soon by Telecom Board Melodie Phelps News Editor An engineering firm for the fiber to the home project will be selected in the next several weeks, after the Telecommunications Board agreed to advertise for proposals. The board met on Wednesday, October 18 and took the next step toward making the fiber project a reality. Engineering proposals will be accepted through November 20, according to the timeline discussed for the project. The board will review the proposals during a special meeting set tentatively for November 27. Board members will use a scoring sheet to rate the proposals. The board also agreed that they may conduct interviews among some of the top companies who submit proposals. Community Telecom Services has received verbal approval for a $7.6 million RUS loan for the project, which would upgrade the local cable system to include digital cable television, high speed internet and telephone services. Local officials are still waiting to receive legal documents regarding the loan, according to board member Greg Latham. Latham said he expects to receive the documents at any time. The board also briefly discussed the issue of finding a site for the local cable system. Board chairman Wade Upchurch directed members of the site committee to begin the process of looking at some possible locations and report back to the full board. A local resident, William Blevins, attended last week's meeting to discuss a problem he has had contacting the cable company when he has experienced weekend outages of the service. The board discussed the current system used to contact on-call employees after hours and on weekends. Currently, customers that experience outages after hours can call the office and leave a message on the machine. Community Telecom system manager Dale Hancock said there are two employees who are on call. He noted that when there is a reported outage, whoever is on call tries to determine what area is affected. Add a comment |
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