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Home Internet delivery on OMU's horizon [Messenger-Inquirer, Owensboro, Ky.]
[September 30, 2014]

Home Internet delivery on OMU's horizon [Messenger-Inquirer, Owensboro, Ky.]


(Messenger-Inquirer (Owensboro, KY) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Sept. 30--Just days after approving a set of rates for a new venture into business telephone service, the board of Owensboro Municipal Utilities is scheduled to hear a presentation on yet another telecommunications enterprise -- home Internet service.



Chris Poynter, superintendent of OMU's telecommunications division, is set to deliver a presentation on "Fiber to the Home" during a work session of the City Utility Commission at 11:30 a.m. Thursday at the OMU Customer Service Center on Tamarack Road.

Sonya Dixon, OMU spokeswoman, said Poynter will provide the commission with a general overview about OMU's options to provide high-speed home Internet service and other services via its existing fiber-optic telecommunications network. She declined to release other details about the presentation, saying that would have to wait until Thursday.


It won't be the first time OMU has ventured into delivery of Internet to homes.

"Several years ago we did wireless Internet," Dixon said. "This is a whole different package." On Sept. 18, the OMU board approved rates for delivery of telephone services to its fiber-optic network Internet business customers. Owensboro has 73 business customers hooked to its high-speed fiber loops now, but it wants to sign up more Internet customers as it attempts to grow its telecommunications unit.

At that meeting, Terry Naulty, OMU's general manager, said Poynter would next brief the commission on overall efforts to grow the telecommunications unit.

It was just a year ago that the utility commission decided not to sell its telecommunications division, opting instead to reinvigorate the unit sector by first hiring a director to focus of growth and marketing. That decision resulted in the hiring of Poynter.

One of the chief arguments against selling the telecommunications unit was because OMU's high-speed, fiber network-based, broadband Internet service was far too closely incorporated into OMU's own electric system communications and control infrastructure.

OMU eventually concluded that selling the fiber assets to an outside concern would create critical security and operational issues for OMU, while increasing costs.

OMU replaced its aging microwave communication system with a fiber-optic telecommunications network in 1996, with the goal of better and more reliable communication within the organization. Within three years, 42 public and private organizations connected to the fiber optic network, using it for ultra high-speed Internet connections, point-to-point telephone service and fast, high-capacity data transfer.

Phase I of the project entailed the stringing of 20 miles of fiber-optic cables in two loops around the city for $1.2 million. Phase II expanded the system to enable commercial customers to connect to strategically placed hubs around town, for an additional $1.5 million.

OMU uses a fraction of the network's capacity for all its internal communications and computer system monitoring and operations.

The telecommunications division broke into the black for the first time, barely, in about 2010, thanks to aggressive expense-cutting. But the real difference maker for the system was the decision in 2008 to sell its wireless Internet service provider business, OMUOnline, to Norlight Inc. of Evansville for $499,694. The business was sold at a loss of $1.2 million. The wireless Internet business was driving big annual losses, OMU officials said at the time.

OMU got into the wireless home Internet business in 2002.

Steve Vied, (270) 691-7297,[email protected] ___ (c)2014 the Messenger-Inquirer (Owensboro, Ky.) Visit the Messenger-Inquirer (Owensboro, Ky.) at www.messenger-inquirer.com Distributed by MCT Information Services

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