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A new internet provider is coming to Albert Lea, and they’re bring fiber optics with them. That’s according to Mark Thoma, CEO of Winneabago Cooperative Telecom Association, who described WCTA as a fiber optic broadband company that also offered digital television cable TV.

WCTA saw this as a great fit to continue our growth in providing customers with the latest of technology, which is fiber optics,” he said.

According to Thoma, fiber optics uses light and data through glass at a rate faster than anything else currently available.

“Basically a pair of glass, or fiber strand, has enough capacity to allow half the world’s population [to] make a phone call to the other half of the population on just one single fiber strand,” he said.

Thoma said the technology was something that would grow with customer needs as band-width and speed grow in the future.

“Fiber optics is the latest and best features for low-latency,” he said. “… During COVID a lot of people did work from home, got familiar with Zoom calls and (video calls).”

For those to work, there needed to be two-way communication, meaning sending and receiving information such as pictures in real time at the same time, a term known as symmetrical service. And fiber optics can offer that.

The project has already begun, with Thoma noting the company had been placing and burying pipe for the last two years, a process he admitted took a little longer and was more expensive.

“It actually is a ring,” he said.

According to Thoma, WCTA deployed fiber as rings. That way, if a fiber or main lead of a fiber distribution was cut, information could simply reverse course the other way.

But, he said, burying would provide more resilience and better protection because it wouldn’t be as subjected to extreme weather.

“We put [the fiber optics] into the pipe first, or we put pipe in the ground, and then we pull the fiber into the pipe,” he said.

He described the process of building new fiber optics as a year-long cycle, with building throughout the summer followed by fiber splicing, testing and electronic installation before fiber conversions. Thoma anticipated installing new customers in late spring after they receive results from summer 2022’s construction season. He is hopeful to have the entire town of Albert Lea converted to fiber optics in the next two to three years.

“It’s important to reach out and provide fiber optics for all of our members, existing and surrounding communities,” Thoma said. “We see it as a huge economic factor for growth for our members and also for our communities that we serve.”

WCTA was also working on poling the fiber and spend the end of 2022 working on the west side of Albert Lea. WCTA already has customers in Albert Lea from 2021 and has been in the industrial park for over a decade.

“We had to complete our existing member base, transitioning from copper-based internet and services to fiber optic in our existing member territory before we could fully invest this type of dollar commitment, man-hours, to a community the size of Albert Lea,” he said, referring to the 29 communities the company provides services to, from Lakota and Bancroft in the west, Grafton in the east, northwest Mason City to the south and Albert Lea in the north.

Thoma estimated the entire project would cost several million, with the company paying for the upgrades.

The company was established in 1950 as a cooperative in Thompson, Iowa, before moving to Lake Mills.

“Basically rural telephone companies and in particular cooperatives began to serve rural customers that didn’t have telephone service,” he said. “So co-ops — so it’s member-owned — put in money … to help begin the co-op and to establish lines that they would put up, aerial telephone lines to help serve rural customers out of the urban centers.”