Pharr, Texas these days is on the frontlines of a hot topic other than immigration, despite the small Rio Grande Valley city sharing a bridge with the Mexican city of Reynosa.
In this “Pharr away” place, closer by car to Monterrey, Mexico than San Antonio, the hot topic is the “digital divide”, and the city government is investing in fiber optic high speed Internet to bridge the gap for its citizens.
“We will close the digital divide in our city,” Pharr mayor Ambrosio Hernandez said. “Every home and every business will have a fiber optic cable attached to their home or business. It will be gigabyte Internet speed to upload and download 24/7/365 to close the digital divide, to increase their ability to educate themselves, pay their bills and stay informed on what’s happening in our city and around the world. It’s great for economic growth as well.”
Pharr Better Place: Fiber Optic High Speed Internet for All
Pharr’s city leadership announced in May that the city would be investing $40 million to provide fiber optic high speed Internet to all its approximately 80,000 residents
The project, which calls for 2.1 million feet or 398 miles of fiber optic cables to be installed in the next year, could be an example of coming construction around the country if Washington’s mega infrastructure bill is approved.
The bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure package passed in the Senate on Aug. 10, 2021 has some $65 billion earmarked to bridge the digital divide.
“Alongside old-fashioned public works projects like roads, bridges and highways, senators have included $65 billion meant to connect hard-to-reach rural communities to high-speed Internet and help sign up low-income city dwellers who cannot afford it”, reports the New York Times.
Fiber optic high speed Internet has become indispensable, especially during the COVID-pandemic, with its increased demands on remote work, learning and socialization.
The bill’s legislation reads: “Access to affordable, reliable, high-speed broadband is essential to full participation in modern life.”
Fiber Optic High Speed Internet Set to Zoom
projections for fiber optic high speed markets with one common denominator: growth is expected to skyrocket.
Recently released reports include:
- The global fiber optics market size is expected to hit U.S. $10.8 billion by 2030 according to a new study.
- Another study forecasts even greater growth with a CAGR of 7 percent between 2021 and 2030 with the global fiber optic cables market reaching $15 billion.
- Fortune Business Insights forecasts a booming high speed fiber optic sensor market thanks to increasing deployment of Industry 4.0 technologies.
- The report title “Fiber Optics: Global Market Trajectory & Analytics” calls for the global fiber optics market to reach $8 billion by 2026.
According to the report projecting global fiber optics market growth to $15 billion, key drivers are:
- Global fiber optic cable market has witnessed significant growth over the last few years, due to the rising demand for high-speed connectivity, with the IT & telecommunication end-use industry segment holding a major market share. Industries such as energy & power, healthcare, and aerospace & defense are the leading verticals, in terms of adoption of the fiber optic technology.
- Fiber optic cables have been witnessing high demand for a long time. While single-mode fibers had already witnessed high adoption among end-use industries and consumers, multi-mode fibers gained momentum recently. The deployment of multi-mode fibers in large-scale data centers and cloud services would continue to be high during the forecast period.
- Applications in telecom and defense & aerospace industries, which require fiber optic cables, are anticipated to rise in demand during the second half of the forecast period. Improvements in the network technology in recent years have led to high-speed Internet connectivity and access to all applications requiring high-speed data such as videoconferencing, audio and video streaming, and cloud storage.
- Fiber optic cable is the transmission method of choice when designing and implementing a reliable real-time video conferencing system without compromising on the quality of videos, audios, and data
Benefits of Moving Data at the Light of Speed
High-speed fiber optic network Internet can move data at the speed of light, literally.
“Each glass strand acts as a conduit for light signals that relay digital code from one end to the other,” says highspeedInternet.com in their guide to fiber. “This technology allows for Internet speeds far beyond what you get from DSL or cable because each fiber optic line can carry multiple signals at top speeds simultaneously.”
While fiber transmits Internet signals via light pulses, DSL, and cable use copper wires to transmit Internet signals via electrical signals. The fiber optic light signals are faster and more efficient than the older copper technology with less signal interference and degradation over long distances.
High-speed fiber optic cables also have the advantage of being thinner than copper wires with more strands able to fit into a single cable, allowing for greater network bandwidth and less traffic congestion.
PS Lightwave’s Senior Director of Network Engineering, Swen Wulf, says, “As fiber optic technology is more durable, it’s also expected to last longer than cable or DSL infrastructure. Cable or DSL service infrastructure will degrade over time, eventually being replaced with advanced, cutting-edge technologies such as fiber optics.”
Wulf says the main benefits of using high-speed fiber optic network Internet is:
- Faster Speeds: Fiber offers faster download speeds and extremely faster upload speeds.
- Lower Latency: Fiber networks have less latency which translates into less lag on Zoom calls and other applications.
- Better Reliability: Fiber signals do not degrade over distance or time and offer enough bandwidth to prevent network congestion.
“For businesses, fiber optic services provide superior levels of scalability, especially as more businesses start to rely upon cloud-based and web-based services,” said Wulf.
Fiber Optics Meets the Need for Speed
High-speed fiber optic network Internet speed plans routinely offer 1GB bandwidth which is plenty fast for work-from-home conference calls, remote learning, movie streaming and game playing.
Businesses can take advantage of even faster speeds with PS Lightwave offering customers speeds up to 40G and 100G along its 5,500 fiber route miles in the greater Houston area.
Contact PS Lightwave today to find out how the largest privately-owned fiber optic Internet network in the country can help your greater Houston business or organization.
