At the Hope Kiwanis Club meeting at noon on Tuesday, the members heard from two staffers from Hope Water & Light’s Broadband service who presented updated numbers of customers, features HW&L offers and will soon offer and spoke about the ways HW&L has made its expertise available for others to learn how to join the industry.
Broadband services supervisor Brent Norris, who has held the position since 2023 first spoke, providing the news that numbers of customers have trended up since they were made available as a pilot first. In May of 2023, the number of subscribers was 75, but when the service was made available to all HW&L customers, 250 had signed up by July of that year. By July of 2024, the number of subscribers had risen to 980. The number for this month is 1,300, the utility having added phone service last fall. Of the 1,300, 120 of the subscribers are commercial.
“Those businesses range from restaurants and convenience stores and gas stations to hardware stores, chicken houses and farms. So we kind of run the gamut there of what we can offer,” Norris said.
Norris said the utility is looking to advance what it offers to meet the demand for more bandwidth, that is more ability to download data at higher speeds. This can allow for better picture and sound resolution in streaming video. “Currently, our offerings for businesses and residential is 100 megabits (per second), 250 megabits, or 500. At some point they're going to be offering, the 2.5 gig(abits) per second, the five, the 10 gig.” The latter would mean for customers the ability to download the same amount of data as would be on a single-layer Blu-ray disc in two and a half seconds.
Customers now enjoying 5G service, the name of which refers to the fifth generation of wireless networks (WiFi) will eventually have 6G available to them, Norris said. “The current equipment we have supports the 5G range. And of course, with the 6G ranges and equipment, they're becoming more available, more cost effective, a. The 6G offers a difference between the two. It offers less waiting and a better range.” This means that the modem that allows your devices to connect to the internet wirelessly will need to be replaced.
Norris said HW&L is resolved to keep up with technological upgrades, including the requirements for Artificial Intelligence, which HW&L just had a safety meeting regarding. He also praised the level of professionalism and know-how of the certified technicians he works with.
Next, Fiberoptic Lead Technician Keegan Johnson, in his fourth year with HW&L broadband, said he had gained experience on the job from dealing with installations on poles to underground construction. Johnson said the acceleration of upgrades for more bandwidth capacity was prompted by a Hope plant’s needs for redundant lines in case one should go down.
“That's why we're pushing for the two and a half and then possibly going to 10 gig, which would make us the fastest provider in Hempstead County. We're 100 percent prepared for that. We have all the equipment necessary, knowledge and skills to do so,” Johnson said.
He described going through about 10 days’ training in Huntsville, Alabama to become certified to work with a transmitter that uses class four and class five fiber optics. “It’s really powerful stuff. It puts us ahead of the end ball, in a sense, to just provide more to industrial clients and use that as a leverage point for any potential industrial clients that were to come into Hope,” Johnson said.
Motivated by the way Hope has embraced him and his family since he moved here six years ago, Johnson said he is happy to give back. So he is pleased to be part of University of Arkansas—Hope Texarkana’s nine-week course for aspiring broadband technicians. “In Arkansas, so far, I've had 44 graduates. Right now we sit at about 43 percent employment rate. So after they graduate the course, they go on and find jobs in the field. Some of those have found jobs that weren't necessarily in fiber optics, but kind of a likewise field that we do a lot of work with. So we're definitely proud of that.” He added that he has also begun to teach in Pine Bluff on weekends.
In answer to questions by the Kiwanis members, Johnson said HW&L’s advantage over other Internet Service Providers is its requirement to stay within 500 customers per technician. “A lot of the local ISPs and ISPs in Arkansas, we've seen do not follow that rule, and that's why you have lasting outages because the workforce isn't there to back them up.”
Mayor Still asked if HW&L has to manage large servers that store data, which often requires a lot of ventilation and loud noise. Johnson said HW&L stores no data, only acting as a channel for it to go through.
Johnson also said HW&L will not allow anyone to touch its fiber or its hardware who is not certified to do so. Other ISPs cannot make that pledge. The utility also prides itself on fast response to outages and good technical support.
“For a lot of our subscribers, having a local call center was the biggest thing. If they have an issue with connecting a device, they want to talk to someone who's local. We definitely seek that route and partner with a call center team to take calls after hours. 24/7 365,” he said.
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