Austin Fiber to the Home Expansion

Challenge: In 2021, the Austin metro population surpassed two-million people. Fiber and broadband services have become a regular conversation among business leaders and individual homeowners alike. Over the last decade, the State’s Capitol has quickly become the country’s next Silicon Valley, with industry leaders such as Apple, Google, Facebook, Tesla, and Oracle entering the metropolitan market area. Austin has been challenged with delivering the necessary bandwidth to support the growth.

Though a confidential client communications provider is the incumbent in most of the market area, they have quickly become the ones to watch when deploying fiber in all market(s) in Central Texas, even areas where they do not provide fiber services. Fiber-To-The-“X” (FTTx) distribution was one of the many areas the communications provider looked to concentrate their efforts and they needed partners in the engineering field to assist with design solutions. They also needed an engineering firm that understood the local municipality permitting requirements in Central Texas to satisfy the needs of the community.

Solution: HR Green worked closely with the communications provider to deploy fiber to local businesses and new and existing homes. Understanding the specific permitting challenges in the area, HR Green relied on our 100+ years of engineering experience and our industry-leading fiber and broadband experience to work collaboratively and seamlessly with the provider and local plan set reviewers to create a fluid submittal process. HR Green ramped up local operations to support the increase in production levels necessary to prepare plan sets and reduce time to construction.

HR Green’s experienced team considered the infrastructure already in place while deploying fiber in existing neighborhoods with an eye to the future. Our development of strategic partners within the reviewing agencies allowed us to address various obstacles during the design phase, which has increased efficiencies, reduced time to build, and increased client savings. HR Green’s ability to scale staffing to meet demand while preparing cost-efficient designs has also allowed the communications provider to pass savings onto the end-user(s): the residents of the Austin metro area.