Sharon Telephone currently has six crews working in Riverside and one crew working in the Timberland Estates housing development to install fiber optic internet.

While the crews are digging and moving earth in the process, Sharon Telephone General Manager Scott Havel said the proven track record of getting fiber to a house is that, within a week or two, you would never know a crew had been there.

“The crews will restore and reseed and do anything they need to restore any disturbance to the yard or the right of way,” he said.

Havel said Sharon Telephone has talked to residents and will contact all residents before doing any work in their yards, although they may start work in city right-of-ways without talking to them.

“Mainly what they do is install a pipe, a duct it’s called, and then the fiber goes inside of that pipe,” Havel said. “Long story short, they use a lot of very heavy equipment to install fibers that are smaller than a human hair.”

The work crews will bore holes to hold the ducts, then they might use a tool called a knife, which is like a large knife on a small tractor, and they’ll hook on the duct and run it through the yard, creating a slit. Depending on distance and terrain, the crews might use different methods in different yards.

Havel said the outdoor work of installing the fiber underground will take place through April and May, then in late May Sharon Telephone will start scheduling installs, where routers are set up with some inside wiring that connects to the device on the side of the house.

Sharon Telephone recently received a Community Connect Grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to expand fiber internet service in and around Riverside. The grant specifically covers the rural areas surrounding Riverside to the north and a small area of about a mile and a half to the south. Sharon Telephone is funding the build in the town of Riverside themselves.

To learn more about Sharon Telephone and their fiber optic internet packages, visit sharontc.com.