Comm-Tract Corp crossed a milestone in our business with the completion of our 100th fiber optic municipal area network in the state of Massachusetts for the City of Newton. Bryan Hopkins, President of Comm-Tract commented; “This is a major milestone for our team here at Comm-Tract, and one of the most sophisticated fiber designs we have installed to date in our decades long service to the municipalities in the northeast.”
The City of Newton engaged Comm-Tract under a design and engineering contract in June of 2012 to develop the construction ready plans for a city-wide fiber optic infrastructure that would serve all city departments, including all public safety communications as well. Once the design and engineering were completed, the city released an RFP for the construction of the network, which was awarded to Comm-Tract in 2013.
The fiber optic municipal area network built by Comm-Tract encompasses over 70 municipal, school, and public safety buildings. It also integrates all public safety RF communications, water department SCADA systems, surveillance camera systems, and other specialized applications utilized by the city. The network is comprised of over 50 miles of single mode fiber across the entire geography of the city. The fiber was installed predominately on aerial poles, and Comm-Tract also constructed new underground conduit pathways where needed for access to many locations and buildings.
The fiber optic municipal area network design is a fully physically diverse dual ring topology which provides the city with fault tolerant, and fully redundant fiber connections to all locations, virtually guaranteeing 100% uptime for all city communications. Currently the network runs at 10gbps between all sites on the single mode fiber, and with future upgrades to the switching layer of the network is planned to support over 100gbps links.
Joe Mulvey, Director of Information Technology stated, “The team at Comm-Tract was fantastic, from the design phase all the way through to implementation. Their depth of experience and knowledge was very evident throughout the project, and their ability to work with our IT staff, and public safety departments to effectively and efficiently integrate all systems over the network was truly excellent.”
