The late-night construction
occurring on Eastern Avenue in George Town is due to Cayman telecommunications
company Logic using micro trenching to lay fibre wires.
Micro trenching is a new digging
technique used to lay micro conduit cable and wire in the asphalt and concrete.
“The micro conduit zipped together
is about a half-inch wide, vertically stacked together with seven channels for
seven wires,” said Richard Corbin, owner of the construction company hired by
Logic to do the work.
This technique is a far cry from
traditional road construction necessary to lay cable or pipes, according to Mr.
Corbin.
“The overall impact is much less,”
Mr. Corbin said. “We have the option of
blocking down half the lane of traffic instead of the whole lane. Start to finish, set up time to take down
time is reduced, and then the final product is a much cleaner product.”
The company can finish 300 feet of
micro trenching, laying wire and cover up in one night, with an eventual goal
of 400 to 600 feet. And all the
construction is done at night-time to avoid traffic congestion.
“You don’t have as many people
annoyed with you as they’re driving down the street,” Mr. Corbin said. “And we actually leave the road cleaner than
when we get there.”
This particular micro trenching
machine uses dry technology — a vacuum cools the blade and cleans the mess as
it goes, instead of water that would add to the construction mess, Mr. Corbin
explained.
The machine uses a blade to cut a
12-inch deep, half-inch wide slit in the road to lay the wire, which is then
filled to maintain the road surface.
Logic is laying the fibre to expand
its current network across Cayman.
“We want to provide additional
choices and services for our clients downtown,” said Mike Edelholm, GM of
Logic.
These installations are going to be
used specifically for data and Internet for businesses in the George Town area.
Logic is one of only a few
telecommunications companies in the Cayman Islands.
But with additions to their data
and Internet network, Logic plans to provide some competition.
“For us, if we looked at technology
20, 30 years ago that LIME (formerly Cable and Wireless) used to do their duct
banks, there’s no way a competitive telecommunications company could do that in
this market,” he said. “The cost alone
would have been too much.”
Construction is planned to continue
for the next two months.
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