Lumos Fiber pitches underground citywide build for New Franklin; company to provide KMZ maps and coordinate with county project

Steve Christ, director of market development for Lumos Fiber, told New Franklin City Council that the company is proposing a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network meant to bring higher-capacity broadband to parts of the city the mayor described as “vastly underserved.” Christ used a demonstration object to explain fiber optics and said fiber ". . .sends the data through light, so it's as fast as the speed of light."

Christ emphasized differences between older copper and coax networks and glass-fiber cable, saying fiber is faster, symmetric for upload and download, and more resilient when buried underground. "What we use it now is light. It holds the data and you send it through. What makes this important is it holds a lot more data," he said. He said Lumos generally does underground builds to limit weather-related outages and to reduce pole-related damage when wind or accidents occur.

Christ described Lumos as a mid-sized…