by Dennis Dalman
Almost four years ago, Sartell and the Sartell-St. Stephen School District began a joint project to update their electronic options, to bring them in line with rapid advances in communications technology.
The project was, in fact, an electronic infrastructure installation to accommodate Sartell’s communications needs well into the middle of this century – and beyond.
Kyle Breitkreutz is the director of technology for the Sartell-St. Stephen School District, a job he has had for 16 years. He explained how the project developed.
The immediate impetus, Breitkreutz explained, was to hook up the Sartell Safety Facility (the new police and fire department) with Internet access. At first, the Granite Consortium Co. in St. Cloud installed lots of fiber-optic strands in the ground at the Safety Facilities building, making it possible for Internet service, as well as enough fiber connections for other forms (and future applications) of communications technology.
Unlike electrical wires, an optical fiber is a flexible, transparent fiber made by stretching glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than a human hair. They are tightly bundled and placed in a protective pipe, then buried in the ground. The fiber bundles are capable of carrying enormous amounts of information, all at once, via light signals over long distances and at higher data transfer rates.
Much of the fiber-optic installation in Sartell was paid for by pandemic CARE funding, in addition to funds from the city and school district.
The project involved cooperation from the fire and police departments, as well as the city and the school district. All were hoping that in time the underground fiber-optic network could be extended. However, the virus pandemic put the kibosh on those plans in 2020.
The city and school district agreed there should be fiber-option extension from the Safety Facilities north along Pinecone Road all the way to 27th Street, where the new high school is located. In addition, it was decided to extend the underground fiber system to Sartell City Hall and to the Community Center at Pinecone Road S. Again, the partnership of the city, school district, Granite Consortium worked to coordinate the project, along with a new partner, Arvig Media, an Internet provider.
The extension plans were all achieved, and now the fiber-optic network includes not only the Safety Facilities building, but also the community center, city hall and the schools.
“It was a great feat that took a lot of partnerships,” Breitkreutz said. “It made it possible to tie all the entities in the city together to make one large network and for the school to do future expansions.”
One phase that is yet to be done is to extend the fiber-optic system along Second Street from Pinecone Road all the way to the bridge and then across the bridge to connect with a fiber network already installed on the east side of the river. That will result in a loop system for redundancy. Breitkreutz used the hypothetical example of a backhoe, for example, digging somewhere above the line and hitting the fiber-optic lines. If such an accident were to happen, the loop system is capable of sending all information automatically through the system in the opposite direction. That fail-safe method is known as “redundancy,” Breitkreutz explained.
Arvig now has access to the fiber-optic system so it is possible it could serve more underserved households and businesses along Second Street. Another plan is to extend the fiber network to homes north of 27th Street sometime in the future, Breitkreutz noted.
Other Internet providers, such as Spectrum and Century Link already provide service to many households and businesses in Sartell.
“The city and school district were our entities in the project,” he said. “It’s up to Arvig (Media) as to how far they want to extend the fiber system, but the option for expansion is definitely there.”
