The path to success for Brunswick County’s ATMC is paved with fiber optic cable.

For the past 10 years, the Shallotte-based communications membership cooperative has grown outside its original southern Brunswick County membership boundaries by responding to and anticipating the county’s growing demand for ever-faster, ever-better broadband, transmitting data in light waves through glass threads.

“Google has elevated the broadband conversation in this country so that companies like Comcast and Time Warner Cable are having to invest and provide faster broadband,” said Jody Heustess, ATMC’s vice president of marketing and sales.

Because bigger metros are getting fiber from Google, he added, AT&T has a fiber initiative in slightly smaller markets, including Wilmington.

ATMC is one of several area broadband providers touting its enhanced services through fiber. While the company’s fiber network originally served medical and educational institutions, increasing numbers of residents are asking for it.
“A lot of people are retiring and moving here from places where they had better service,” Heustess said.

He said that ATMC began installing fiber to the home (FTTH) in 2005 in southern Brunswick County when many new subdivisions were under construction.

“As we started to build out fiber to these neighborhoods, more developers started asking us to come in,” Heustess said, adding that ATMC is the only company providing FTTH service to both residential and commercial customers in the area.

Recently ATMC expanded its activity into northern Brunswick County.

“We’ve had fiber optics in the ground to a wireless tower site in the Leland [International Logistics] Park for some time but set the electronic switching equipment there in early 2014 to serve Compass Pointe,” said Kris Ward, ATMC’s residential development and special projects manager.

The request from Compass Pointe was an indication of demand to come. Since ATMC extended its Focus fiber optic network to homes in that development, other subdivisions have asked the company for FTTH.

Heustess said ATMC is now “aggressively” going back and finding commercial and residential developments, such as Waterford and the shops and offices fronting Brunswick Forest, near the company’s fiber network. And in December, the company will open a store in the Brunswick Forest commercial development to support its growth in the northern part of the county.

“Customers are starting to come to us,” Heustess said. “Fiber is the Autobahn to service delivery.”

It is also essential in attracting new business to the area, said Scott Satterfield, president and CEO of Wilmington Business Development.

Speaking recently about the importance of AT&T’s certifying Pender Commerce Park in October as a “Fiber Ready” site, Satterfield said, “For a business considering a relocation or expansion, the presence of fiber optics and high-speed communications infrastructure is always among its top priorities in evaluating a site. This Fiber Ready designation clearly shows the presence of modern communications services and can be a valuable tool as we continue to aggressively recruit businesses which rely on advanced technologies.”

While working to spread its fiber networks to other industrial sites in the state, AT&T launched its U-verse product: a fiber optic-enabled package consisting of high-speed Internet, TV and voice services. U-verse became available to portions of New Hanover County in the fall of 2014 and will gradually expand, AT&T officials said at that time.

Currently, company spokesman Josh Gelinas said, AT&T’s fastest Internet service in North Carolina – U-verse with AT&T GigaPower – is available in parts of the Triangle, Piedmont Triad and greater Charlotte area.

“U-verse with AT&T GigaPower offers Internet speeds up to 1 gigabit per second and can improve the experience for customers when connecting to the cloud, doing a videoconference, streaming videos and music, playing online games and more,” he said.

But Wilmington does not yet appear to be at the top of the list for the enhanced service.

“We’ll continue to expand and enhance U-verse with AT&T GigaPower by working with cities that have receptive investment policies and in areas with strong consumer demand,” Gelinas said. “In Wilmington, where we launched our U-verse service last year, we’re interested in taking advantage of our existing network assets and enhancing service in the future.”

Other telecommunications providers in the tri-county area are also using fiber networks to deliver faster and more advanced services in a wider service area.

“It’s not all about speed. Quality is a big concern for markets like Wilmington,” said Shaun Olsen, CEO of Leland-based CloudWyze.

The company, an independent provider of phone and Internet to commercial customers in New Hanover and Brunswick counties, is stretching its services to surrounding areas. While most of its service is wireless, CloudWyze still emphasizes the importance of fiber networks.

Outside wireless coverage areas, people get their Internet through fiber networks, or they use fiber and wireless in a belt-and-suspenders strategy to ensure uninterrupted service, Olsen said, adding that the so-called “last mile” is still an issue where fiber comes only to the curb or to a neighborhood hub.

When that last mile consists of copper cable, speed and quality can suffer.

Because of the superior capabilities of those tiny glass threads, Olsen said, independent companies and major Internet providers alike are gradually replacing copper with fiber.

Time Warner Cable is converting its network in the Wilmington area to all-digital TWC Maxx service, transitioning all remaining analog TV channels to a digital format.

The target for completion is mid-December, said company spokesman Scott Pryzwansky.

“Going all-digital delivers better picture and sound and frees up capacity in our network to deliver faster Internet, more channels and On Demand content and other advanced services,” he said.

TWC’s residential network, Pryzwansky said, is a combination of fiber and coaxial cable, with that cable running directly to the home. The company’s business class commercial network can deliver fiber all the way to the customer.

“For business customers we currently deliver speeds up to the multiple gigabits via fiber,” he said. “On the residential side, by moving to an all-digital lineup, we’re laying the foundation for even faster speeds and new features in the future, including gigabit speeds for residential customers, but we haven’t announced any plans for Wilmington yet.”

Just because advanced services are available via fiber or via a combination of fiber and other cable doesn’t mean that all customers will take advantage of it. Having top-notch speed and quality is expensive, for one thing.

CloudWyze’s Olsen says some business customers don’t want to pay for dedicated service that guarantees reliability, so they put up with less-expensive alternatives.