RG Fiber starting Baldwin City residential connections, eyeing expansion to Lawrence, Eudora

Chad Meyers, operations field manager for RG Fiber of Baldwin City, installs gigabit-capacity cable to the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity just off the Baker University campus in January 2016.

Getting into the fiber-optic cable business has taught software designer and RG Fiber CEO Mike Bosch lessons about patience.

“I’ve found I don’t have any,” he said. “The entire telecommunications industry moves very slowly. Coming from a background in software design, I’m not used to moving at that pace. When you think of a company like Amazon, they roll out new, innovative features twice a day. The telecommunications industry might have a new innovation once every three to five years.”

Despite delays and missed timetables, Bosch is pleased RG Fiber started “lighting up” Baldwin City residential customers in the final weeks of December with gigabit-capacity Internet service, three months after it provided service to the Baker University campus a block north of the company’s downtown office. To deliver the service to the community, the company installed fiber-optic cable along Kansas Highway 10 from just east of Eudora to Lawrence and then south to Baldwin City.

Chad Meyers, operations field manager for RG Fiber of Baldwin City, installs gigabit-capacity cable to the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity just off the Baker University campus in January 2016.

Those accomplishments are both a source of pride and frustration for Bosch. He says he is delighted that customers in Baldwin City are now experiencing the benefits of high-speed Internet, but frustrated it took so long to get them connected and that “too many” who preregistered for the service are still waiting.

Bosch first had hoped to start service in the community in the spring of 2015 and then, when that date was missed, when Baker classes resumed in August. Details of a lease agreement to link the company’s fiber to that out of Kansas City contributed to that delay, but Bosch said another issue was a problem that continues to plague progress.

“The largest obstacle is getting materials in a timely fashion,” Bosch said. “Fiber materials are hard to come by, and getting them consistently when they are needed is more difficult.”

Bosch is optimistic that problem can be resolved. The company has developed a network of reliable vendors who understand the needs of an expanding business, he said.

Slowing the expansion of service now in Baldwin City is winter weather and the company’s startup status. With no experience in connecting customers to service, RG Fiber and its contractors are involved in a trial-and-error process of developing the most efficient ways to make those connections from its own buried lines and the overhead strands it is leasing from the Baldwin City school district, he said. Chad Meyers, a longtime employee of the former Sunflower Broadband in Lawrence, has been hired to lead that effort.

“He’s dedicated to recreating the culture of customer service Sunflower customers enjoyed,” Bosch said.

Developing an efficient installation process is one of the goals RG Fiber is looking to have in place before expanding into Eudora, Bosch said. That effort would wait until a substantial number of those who have signed up for service in Baldwin City were connected, but not 100 percent of them.

Although the delays of the last year have taught him not talk about specific dates, RG Fiber will start expansion into Eudora “relatively soon,” Bosch said.

“That’s definitely a 2016 project,” he said. “Eudora is already designed. We know what we are going to do there.”

After Eudora, the next step in the company’s expansion will be Lawrence, Bosch said. In anticipation of that move, he is attempting to renegotiate his arrangement with the city of Lawrence. What he wants is something like a franchise agreement the city’s existing phone and cable companies have, which allows them access to all city right-of-way for a set 5 percent franchise fee.

Currently, RG Fiber has to negotiate use of right-of-way for each project, get the City Commission’s approval of that negotiated agreement and then pay a fee for the project.

“It’s a piecemeal process,” Bosch said. “It’s a huge constraint in our ability to move quickly. Those individual agreements take a great deal of time for us and city staff.”

He has been in talks with city staff about the issue as recently as last Wednesday, Bosch said, and was confident a solution could be found.

One city staffer involved in those discussions, Brandon McGuire, assistant to the city manager, agreed the individual project approvals were time-consuming and cumbersome. The city would like to accommodate Bosch by finding a more efficient process within the constraints of Federal Communication Commission regulations, state statute and city ordinances, he said.

“Where we left it was the next step would be for Mr. Bosch to submit a request,” McGuire said. “The city wants to do what it can to facilitate development. We need him to articulate terms of an agreement.”