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July 2, 2001

Fiber-optic networks to spruce up area

- Features such as faster Internet service could hit region by next year
By BILL ECHLIN
Record-Eagle staff writer
      TRAVERSE CITY - Consumers in northwestern Michigan can expect services such as faster Internet downloads and telephones that ring a particular way from particular callers once a host of communication companies complete their plans to build fiber-optic networks in the area.
      Some services will be available as early as next year, while others are still a few years away. But once the high-speed, high-capacity communications networks are completed, consumers, businesses and the local economy should benefit.
      Michigan's independent phone companies are now building a fiber-optic communications network to bring advanced voice and data services to rural areas, including northwest Lower Michigan. The project involves connecting 23 phone companies, including Ace Telephone Company of Michigan Inc. based in Mesick, Kaleva Telephone Co. and Peninsula Telephone Co. based in Grand Traverse County's Peninsula Township.
      Running the network is a new central switching facility in Lansing, operated by Great Lakes Comnet Inc. It was formed and is owned by the phone companies to build and operate the 800-mile network.
      First phases of the project, set to be running later this year, will serve central Lower Michigan from Lansing to Mt. Pleasant and from Flint to the east and Grand Rapids to the west. The next phase, with construction to start this year, will expand the network to the Kalamazoo, Battle Creek and Jackson areas. Final phases will extend the network to the Detroit area as well as northwest Lower Michigan, hooking up Traverse City, Big Rapids, Cadillac, Muskegon, Mesick and Kaleva.
      That schedule may be rearranged, depending on how competition develops in various markets, said Albert Eaton, Great Lakes Comnet president and chief executive officer.
      Also heading into some of the same market areas with high-capacity broadband fiber-optic network is Mission Networks LLC of Traverse City. It announced earlier this year it would build a network connecting smaller communities in Lower Michigan and Ohio to larger centers and later expand to Pennsylvania and New York. It plans to start construction in three to five months, with completion of the first phase about 18 months later. When completely built over all four states, the network would have 4,000 miles of fiber-optic cable.
      Advanced fiber-optic voice and data networks can carry vast amounts of traffic at very high speeds, making it possible, for instance, to allow local rural phone companies to offer Digital Subscriber Line Internet access services that are much faster than traditional dial-up modem connections.
      Mission Networks and Comnet managers have had discussions about how their two systems might be able to work together while at the same time competing for customers. In some cases, for instance, Mission could handle some of the Comnet member's traffic to areas Comnet hasn't covered while Comnet can in effect extend Mission's network into areas Mission won't reach. Both, however, will be going head-to-head to sign up corporate, institutional, government, communications and other customers in the region.
      They also will be fighting over traffic expected to be generated by the more than 160 companies that have already been approved by state regulators to compete with Ameritech and Verizon for local phone service business in the state.
      Eaton said the Comnet member phone companies stand to gain in several ways by building their network, including reducing their costs on calls that cross the state. They also will have the capacity, in time, to offer advanced voice telephone services such as call blocking and voice mail, as well as selective ringing patterns for preferred callers. In time, the companies can look at providing video and high-speed data transmission lines to their customers. That will depend on their individual abilities to build their own fiber-optic subsystems out to their customers.
      Meanwhile, the state's largest and dominant phone companies, Ameritech and Verizon, will continue to expand and enhance their own networks, quickly shifting from costly low-capacity old copper cables to cheaper fiber-optic lines and adding advanced switching facilities. Ameritech already serves the Grand Traverse area with two high-capacity fiber-optic lines.
      If all the announced advanced communications networks actually get built in the next couple of years, northwest Lower Michigan is going to be highly wired, and that's very good for the region's economy, economic development experts say.
      Charles Blankenship, president of the Traverse Bay Economic Development Corp., said recently that companies shopping for industrial park sites are demanding high-speed fiber-optic network hookups. Where they are available, he said, sites sell out quickly.
      Bill Echlin is the reporter for business and tourism. He can be reached at (231) 933-1493, or at bechlin@record-eagle.com