Dear Lyndon Township resident,
We’re writing today to provide more information regarding the recent outage of the Lyndon Township broadband service. The broadband network in the Township is owned by all of us, and it is frustrating and disruptive when service on our network isn’t working. It is the ultimate responsibility of the Lyndon Township Oversight Committee and Lyndon Township Board to ensure this network is operating smoothly, and you have our apologies for this disruption.
There has been some confusion regarding how the network operates. Lyndon Township owns about 68 miles of fiber optic cables that run along the roads within the Township – all of these lines are buried, and protected from adverse weather. Our network is operated by Midwest Energy and Communications (MEC), based out of Cassopolis, MI. The fiber network in Lyndon is connected to the broader internet through fiber optic cables that run to the East towards Ann Arbor. These cables are owned and operated by third parties and contracted for our use These cables are mostly aerial (run along utility poles). This “middle mile” connection is where this most recent and other outages have occurred, on aerial fiber in Lima Township owned by a third party.
Regarding this most recent outage – the outage began around 5:30pm on Saturday, March 6. MEC immediately dispatched a technician, who used a tool to identify the approximate location of the outage, identified as a third party fiber line in Lima Township on Jackson Rd. The third party provider was aware of the outage and MEC coordinated with them to begin repairs. When fiber crews arrived onsite they discovered that heavy snow had broken a DTE utility pole, and a hot electric line was resting on the fiber. The fiber crews could not approach the damage until the hot electric line was addressed. DTE repaired the broken utility pole and the electric line during the night of Sunday, March 7. At 9am on Monday, March 8 the fiber crews returned and began their repairs. The hot electric line had melted the fiber in several places, requiring the replacement of about 3000 feet of fiber. The fiber repair required extended time because the fiber line at this location runs through marsh land that utility trucks were unable to drive into, so manual pole climbing was required to complete the replacement. The fiber replacement was completed at about 9:30pm, but the link failed to come back up. An MEC technician identified a cable splicing error by the third party contractor, which was addressed just before 11pm on Monday, March 8, ending the outage.
As we have discovered, having only one fiber line connecting us to the broader internet is a problem that has resulted in an unacceptable level of outages. It is important to note that every Township-wide unplanned outage we have experienced has been due to an outage of this third party fiber line – the network within the Township has never had an unplanned outage, and service at MEC headquarters has never had an unplanned outage. To prevent this in the future, the Township has built a second external fiber line to provide a backup in the case that our primary external fiber line fails. This project has been underway for over a year, and the final link was constructed just last week. This link includes buried fiber cable running from the edge of the township to a third party connection just South of Chelsea which then continues to the West. This redundant fiber path was completely funded with American Rescue Plan Act funds. Unfortunately we have not yet connected the new line to the diverse third party line that will connect us to Cassoplis (using a different route than our primary connection). We expect this last step to take about 90 days although we and MEC are working with the third party provider to expedite this. When this new connection is in place, a failure of our primary connection would cause an automatic immediate failover to this backup connection, avoiding any outage. An outage could still be possible (for example, if severe weather damaged the primary and backup lines at the same time), but that would be very unlikely.
The other area where we need to improve is communication – we understand that there has been a lot of confusion with Township residents regarding what is happening during outages. While neither we nor MEC can always give an exact time of when service will be restored (due to waiting on a third party to repair a utility pole, for example), we can do a better job of sharing information so that everyone is as informed as possible. To this end, we are working to implement two things: first, a status page where residents can visit to see the current and past status of the network, including current updates in the case of an outage. Second – a text messaging system that residents can opt into in order to receive updates in the case that an outage occurs. Please stay tuned regarding these new capabilities in the coming weeks.
In conclusion, the Lyndon Township Oversight Committee and Lyndon Township Board acknowledge our responsibility to ensure that this critical service is operating smoothly. We apologize for the recent disruption, and hope that you will reach out to oversight@lyndonbroadband.org with any questions.
Best regards,
Pam Byrnes
Lyndon Township Supervisor
Supervisor@lyndontownshipmi.gov
Broadband Oversight Committee
Oversight@lyndonbroadband.org
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