For Immediate Release (03/10/2023)
Winona, MN – Hiawatha Broadband Communications (HBC) has announced it will be building a high-speed fiber-optic network in the City of Empire. The Fiber-To-The-Premise (FTTP) project will provide multi-Gigabit speeds to homes and businesses.
HBC president, Dan Pecarina, said “The City of Empire realizes what the importance of having a reliable, high-speed broadband connection means to a growing community. By using the most recently enhanced fiber technology, the network will be capable of delivering broadband service as fast as 10 Gigabits of symmetrical speed, ideal for those customers who consume a lot of bandwidth with a growing number of network-capable devices in the home. With hybrid working and learning environments now commonplace, residents and businesses require much more bandwidth capacity, and our network will provide that.”
Until last month, Empire was known as Empire Township. The City of Empire was officially incorporated on February 28, 2023.
HBC Director of Technical Operations, Michael Barker, said they are just waiting on the weather to cooperate before work can begin.
“We’ll get started on construction as soon as the ground thaws this spring. The construction area will be divided into smaller zones called “PONs”, Barker said, “Each PON will take approximately 6 weeks to build before services can be made available.”
Once conditions allow, the construction process begins with engineers marking the fiber route. Then utility locators will begin marking any buried infrastructure with either small flags or painted lines. Once the location of buried utilities has been verified, drill crews will begin boring a pathway for placing the conduit which is used to protect the fiber-optic cable.
Nearly one-thousand homes in Empire will have access to the fiber network by the end of this year. “HBC will continue the project by extending the fiber network to the more rural areas of Empire in 2024,” Pecarina said. “This commitment by HBC will blend well with HBC’s fiber network construction of Farmington which also starts this spring. It is our hope that we can reach a significant portion of the Farmington school district which includes the new city of Empire.”
Residents of Empire should watch for more information about HBC and project construction details arriving in mailboxes soon.
About HBC: Headquartered in Winona, MN, Hiawatha Broadband Communications, Inc. (HBC) delivers industry-leading telecommunications services to communities in southeastern Minnesota and west-central Wisconsin. HBC builds and operates hybrid fiber and fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) networks as well as providing wireless broadband in rural, underserved areas. The company has 100 employees, with eight local office locations serving over 30 communities.
