Sheldon, Iowa — If you’ve seen work crews digging trenches around town in the past several days it’s due to an upgrade project being undertaken by Premier Communications, the Sioux Center-based communications company that offers cable TV, landline telephone and broadband internet service to Sheldon and several other northwest Iowa communities.
Premier Communications CEO Doug Boone says his company ran fiber optic cable to some residential areas on Sheldon’s north side, but they have a different focus this year.
(As above) “This year what we’re doing is we’re really focusing on bringing fiber out to the business district. We always look at those types of areas in particular your business is critical, they need to have a good connectivity, even more so than most residential areas. So that’s our plan for this year would be to put fiber throughout the business district in Sheldon.”
Boone says this year’s focus on the business district will benefit some residential customers, as well.
(As above) “When we design a network it isn’t always defined by where the business starts and stops a lot of it is based on you know what’s the best way to route the fiber and while we’re going through a certain area we’re gonna fulfill, if it’s residential customers or business we’ll take care of them all.”
This summer’s project is bringing what he calls a “future-proof” network.
(As above) “What we’re doing is we’re bring this area of the community a real future proof network. It’s going to provide the capabilities for gigabit services, we’re gonna be able to grow as the as the business development area grows, and they’re really again doing what we do is prepare for the future just as we started many many years ago when bringing fiber throughout many areas of northwest Iowa, and we’re finding with this COVID-19 up here is that those investments made five, ten, even fifteen years ago are being utilized today.”
Boone says the upgrades will let them fully serve the increasing number of ways people are using the internet.
(As is) “It used to be, you know we were a traditional landline telephone company, then we moved in to become a cable television company, and now we’re a broadband based internet company. And clearly at a time like this with all the work at home experiences that people are going through, children being home and finding a way that they want to maybe watch a little bit a Netflix or Hulu plus or something like that, we’re definitely seeing an increase in the amount of utilization on the broadband network.”
Boone says the current project began last year with engineering work. Now construction is underway and will continue throughout the spring and summer months. He says they hope to be able to begin connecting customers to the new fiber by late summer or early fall.
