Anyone who follows this blog knows we like to talk about ways to Build Smart. It’s more than a tagline. It’s even about more than building. Build Smart is our working mantra that means considering every single aspect of how we live, work and play together, and trying to figure out ways to do those things more efficiently and effectively. Every so often, we like to tip our hard hats to those who embrace the Build Smart mentality, whatever they do.
Across the country tech-minded individuals are clamoring for a technology that’s changing the game – dark fiber. Dark fiber is simply fiber optic infrastructure that’s yet to be turned on by an owner or provider. It’s offering big benefits for enterprise businesses, Internet carriers, data centers and business owners. Among these are lightning fast, one-gigabyte connection speeds, increased security, scalability and redundancy options. And since the cables are used exclusively by their owners, there’s no danger of slowing down because a cable company allowed it to become oversubscribed. At the rate cities and businesses are investing in dark fiber, it will likely play a big part in the future of Build Smart.
Given the rising number of tech incubators and startups here in the St. Louis area, it’s no surprise the city has a jump on dark fiber infrastructure. Some major St. Louis broadband users, like the downtown co-working space T-Rex, are already tapping into St. Louis dark fiber networks thanks to the folks at Arch Fiber.
In the likely event that gigabyte Internet speeds are an expectation of the building tenants of the future, dark fiber networks will play a large part in making it so. As Design-Build pioneers, we kind of see ourselves in the local companies like Arch Fiber, disrupting the industry giants and building their business one relationship at a time.
In an upcoming series of blog posts, we’ll be looking back at some important moments in St. Louis Build Smart history. Before we do, we decided to take a quick look forward at what could be the future of Internet connectivity. After all, building smart means keeping an eye on the innovators. To learn more about Build Smart construction, and to stay on top of industry trends, subscribe to our 3627.
