Contractors are busy laying fibre optic cable in Coquitlam to connect School District 43 offices and four schools to faster internet service by mid-October.
The district's manager of internet technology gave the board of education an update on a five-year, $4 million project to speed up the district's clogged internet service.
Brian Kuhn said district board offices will be hooked up next month, along with Centennial, Dr. Charles Best, Como Lake middle, Gleneagle and Pinetree schools in Coquitlam, with six other schools connected to fibre optic by next summer.
The project also involves reengineering the district's internet services and adding security tools and other programs that will reduce congestion.
Two years ago, Kuhn said, the district faced a "network crisis" and dealt with the issue on several fronts including hooking 10 elementary schools up to Telus fibre, with funding from the province, and partnering with Coquitlam's QNet fibre optic network.
The QNet deal, which will cost about $25,000 a year in leasing fees for Phase 1 schools now being connected, plus about $270,000 in capital costs, is coming to fruition with the digging of trenches and laying of fibre optic cable around school district offices and connecting it to QNet fibre.
Kuhn said the remaining high schools - Riverside and Terry Fox in Port Coquitlam, Port Moody and Heritage Woods secondary plus Bramblewood elementary in Port Moody and Summit middle in Coquitlam - will be connected by next summer.
The timing of the project couldn't be better, Kuhn said, because the district was able to tie in with utilities being installed by Shaw along St. Johns because of Evergreen Line construction. He said Shaw agreed to put district fibre in its conduit, saving the district about $150,000. "We're saving the cost of installing the trench along St. Johns," Kuhn said.
In Coquitlam, meanwhile, along Foster Avenue, contractors are using a heavy-duty saw to cut a narrow trench, a foot deep, in which the district's conduit will be laid down, and fibre "blown in." It will then be covered over and patched.
Kuhn told the board the district is also coming up with a Digital Citizenship code to guide conduct on the web and is installing optimization tools that will filter out inappropriate content and package data so it takes up less room in the network.
However, 20 schools remain on traditional ADSL networks, which are slower than fibre optic, but Kuhn said the network optimization program will speed things up for them, as well.
"That will really clean things up and that will make the ADSL schools look like (they have) shiny new pipes," Kuhn told The News.
