Kitsap County's Plan for Transition to Fiber Optics

Putting my engineer’s hat on, last week I attended a presentation by our county Information Services Director, George Geyer outlining the county’s master plan for improving communications in the future. From a real estate stand point the topic is very timely and important to future property buyers. For that reason the following will provide a brief update to potential new homeowners.

From a communications standpoint our small county is blessed in the fact we have several military establishments scattered throughout the county. In addition, the four cities, county government and our community college are all proactive in both sensing the need for, and working toward establishing state-of-the-art communications capabilities in the county. What is at stake here is being able to process Voice, Video and Data kinds of information using the fastest and most accurate means possible. By today’s standards that usually equates to the use of Fiber Optics.

Fiber Optics can transmit many times the amount of information compared to existing (usually) copper wire systems. In the most simple technical comparison terms this means
Roughly 10 -100 megabytes/second verses 1.5 megabytes/second using the current T-1 Network as it is called. In the future the county will be looking at wireless communications in some critical areas to supplement the planned Fiber Optic system.

What is important to note is that the various participating agency’s involved in the communications upgrade bring different amounts of money, expertise and most importantly, different goals to the table. It will be the role of Information Services to work with all of the participants in an attempt to maintain compatibility in both equipment purchased and the procedures to be employed. Suffice to say it will be no easy task.

The good news for county residents is that they will befit from all of the above efforts. This is both from a personal (computer and telephone user) standpoint to that of having better response from government agencies; both on a day-to-day basis as well as during emergencies or in the event of a disaster.

As is always the case in a county-wide upgrade of this nature, there is a cost involved. This will mean it may be a long time for some of the outlying homes in the county to avail themselves to Fiber Optic hookups. Therefore, people new to our area are cautioned to verify whether they are purchasing property within an area that will be served by the proposed improvements discussed above.