Smithville lights up first fiber customers, Jasper residential service now coming online

JASPER (Indiana) – Smithville Fiber started lighting up its all-new residential fiber network in Jasper earlier this spring by turning on its first fiber-based customers, according to John Patten, president. “This is an exciting time for Smithville Fiber in Jasper,” Patten said. “We’ve completed a gigantic amount of work in planning, engineering and setting up our initial network, and we’re right on track.”

“This is great news for the people of Jasper,” said Mayor Terry Seitz. “We’re now a step closer to bringing GigaCity fiber services to Jasper and we anticipate this technology will impact our individual and corporate citizens in a major way.”

Patten said that early reviews of the new Smithville service from customers “were uniformly very positive.” More than 20 homes have been turned up with several more being scheduled weekly. “New Smithville customers tend to use the word ‘fast,’ when they describe their new Gigabit service,” he added.

Having fiber-based gigabit services provides a host of new features and capabilities for Jasper homes, according to Dave Brodin, Smithville Fiber COO. These include reliable high-speed service for homes that stream movies, music and data, use multiple devices (for example, TV, smartphone, tablets, desktops and video security) or regularly use Internet-based services. “We say Smithville makes life better because it does,” Brodin noted. “The Internet offers Jasper families many advantages and opportunities, and Smithville Fiber helps people take full advantage of them.”

Based on a private-public-partnership agreement agreed to in early 2015, Smithville Fiber is constructing an all-new Gigabit fiber network in Jasper, including a fully redundant fiber-optic ring. The new network will feature Smithville’s newest GigaCity technology, offering symmetrical high-speed Internet up to a full gigabit of speed. In addition to the high-speed Internet service Smithville also offers digital TV (with more than 200 channels), voice, home security and automation, and 4G cellular plans.

While all Jasper residents and businesses are scheduled to have full access to Smithville Fiber services by 2018, the company is deploying a pre-registration plan to guide initial residential fiber deployment in areas where construction is moving towards.

To help with rolling out the new Smithville network, the company  has asked Jasper residents to pre-register and confirm their interest by individual neighborhoods. As part of this pre-registration process, Jasper neighborhoods who have the highest level of confirmed interest are then designated to Smithville “fiberhoods” and Gigabit fiber deployment begins. To help encourage pre-registration, Smithville has been conducting an online “race,” where pre-registrations are tracked and displayed. The Jasper fiberhood located in the Brookstone neighborhood was the first to win a pre-registration “race” and qualify as part of the deployment process as a new Smithville “fiberhood.”

For ease of tracking progress during the pre-registration “race,” each potential Jasper fiberhood is named after a sports car. The Brookstone neighborhood was called the “Audi” fiberhood.

The latest neighborhood to qualify as a Smithville fiberhood is designated as the Miatas, and is located just west of the Germantown Shopping Center (starting on the south side of the Mill Creek neighborhoods) and continuing south to Reyling Drive.

“This online ‘race’ helps us efficiently build out our services where there is the highest demand,” explained Brodin. “The advantage in being among the first to receive services is that Smithville will waive installation fees for those who pre-registered during this time.”

Residents interested in pre-registering for services should go online tohttp://jasper.smithville.com and check fiber availability for the address. If Smithville fiber services could possibly be available for their area in upcoming months, residents will then be given the opportunity to potentially accelerate their position in fiber construction and deployment by pre-registering online. An active graph tracks progress of the various neighborhoods, and people who pre-register (enter their name and address) are automatically added to the appropriate “fiberhood.”

Smithville also offers business services for both small and large businesses alike. For more information about business service, people can go online and visit http://jasper.smithville.com/business/ or they can contact the business development group at Smithville directly  at 800-742-4084.

Nationally recognized as a top 100 broadband company for the past seven consecutive years, Smithville operates high-speed fiber broadband service to residential areas and to Indiana-certified technology parks, hospitals, manufacturers, financial institutions, municipalities, large non-for-profit organizations, and school systems.