ImOn Communications Boosts Broadband Access

Challenge: ImOn is a local provider of fiber-based internet, data, video, and voice services in Eastern Iowa. Eager to achieve its goals to significantly increase revenues through geographic expansion, ImOn began to expand its service offering outside the core Cedar Rapids metro area.

The company had a strong engineering team but augmented its staff in 2018 with an outside consultant to assist with the design of Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) in two additional Eastern Iowa communities. The original vendor was inflexible in its design process, leading ImOn to evaluate its staffing options and seek a new design partner in the summer of 2019.

Solution: HR Green was initially selected by ImOn to provide feasibility, high-level, and low-level design for 8,000 business and residential service points in Dubuque and Iowa City markets in 2019.  Since that time, HR Green has delivered designs for three markets serving more than 40,000 service points in a program that will completely overbuild these communities by 2025. HR Green has also assisted with the evaluation of initial feasibility and high-level design for other potential markets in the potential ImOn footprint.

By leveraging its strong initial kickoff and documentation process, HR Green was able to clearly understand the architecture of the ImOn network and how designs were translated into effective OSP construction documents. Working closely with ImOn, HR Green developed a market deployment model built on the creation of the distributed GPON network with both buried and aerial construction.

HR Green developed permit drawings, fiber maps, bills of material, and other key deliverables designed to mirror ImOn’s in-house engineering prints and integrated deliverables into marketing and OSS systems, creating significant operational savings as ImOn went to construction on the new buildouts.

Benefit: ImOn’s expansion has been celebrated by local leaders as having a significant impact on their communities. Broadband access is critical for economic development and improved outcomes with distance learning, telemedicine, and remote work. ImOn’s fiber optic networks are technically superior to the DSL and coaxial cable plants currently available in the markets served.