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News Updates

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CNS Upgrades Its Outside Cable Plant

On June 27, CNS will begin upgrading part of its cable and fiber-optic network. This upgrade will replace 8,000 components within the network’s Outside Cable Plant and is expected to take six months to complete. Ultimately, the upgrade will expand the plant’s capacity for bandwidth and enable CNS to continue to provide the state-of-the-art services its customers have come to expect.

The Outside Cable Plant is the system of switches, nodes, amplifiers and fiber-optic cable that makes up the part of the CNS network that carries information between CNS’ central office and its customers. Currently, the Outside Plant has the capacity for 750 MHz of bandwidth. This upgrade will expand the plant’s capacity to 1 GHz of bandwidth.

“Bandwidth can be thought of as the number of lanes on the highway that the data has to travel down. The more bandwidth you have, the more lanes you have on your highway, which means that you can support more traffic,” said Technology Resources Operations Manager Chris White. “By increasing the size of our highway, we have the capacity to add new services, like additional HD channels and the ability to accommodate increasing bandwidth needs related to Internet usage.”

In addition to adding increased capacity for bandwidth, the Outside Cable Plant upgrade will also place CNS’ fiber-optic lines closer to customer’s homes. This – in conjunction with the addition of more nodes, or local data distribution centers – will improve signal strength to customers.

Another benefit of the addition of more nodes is that fewer homes will be serviced by each node. This will create a more stable network and help to minimize large-scale outages.

While the upgrade takes place each area will be worked on for three to five days.

“While we are replacing the components in an area, customers may experience brief interruptions in cable, Internet and Internet-based services which should only last for 10 to 15 minutes, but they may recur throughout the day,” said Assistant City Manager – Utilities Don Atkinson. “Please be assured that we will work hard to ensure that no residential cable and Internet services will be interrupted during evenings or weekends. In addition, most commercial areas will be upgraded during non-business hours in order to minimize service interruptions during business hours.”

For more information on the Outside Cable Plant upgrade, visit www.thomasville.org.

Click here to watch a video about the upgrade

City Council Approves Construction of Time-Fill CNG Fueling Station

At its regular Council meeting held on May 14^th, Thomasville’s City Council approved a recommendation from the Compressed Natural Gas committee to award to Wise Gas, of Weston, FL, a contract in the amount of $301,113 for the construction of a CNG time-fill fueling station.

The City plans to construct this CNG time-fill station as a part of an overall plan to convert the City’s fleet to CNG fuel where appropriate. Initially, this time-fill fueling station, which uses low-pressure compressed natural gas to fill vehicles over several hours, will have the ability to accommodate six vehicles at one time. Future plans will include scaling this station to accommodate 12 vehicles.

City Manager/Utilities Superintendent Steve Sykes noted that there are several benefits to converting to CNG, including lower costs of fuel, a decreased dependence on foreign oil and a reduced carbon footprint.

“By converting to this cleaner burning fuel source we can reduce our City’s impact on the environment, a goal set in our Strategic Plan. Plus the fuel savings will help us control our operating costs, which in turn will benefit our customers," Sykes said.

Earlier this year, the City Council approved the purchase of 4 garbage trucks which will be fueled by compressed natural gas. Within the next three years, the City plans to convert all 12 of its garbage trucks to run on CNG, which is estimated to save approximately $200,000 annually in fuel costs to operate this fleet.

“With diesel costs on the rise, the savings that we will see from switching to a CNG-fueled garbage fleet make the decision to pursue this initiative an easy one,” said Mayor Max Beverly. “We expect that the savings from this project will fully pay for itself within five years.”

Last month the City Council approved the extension of a compressed natural gas line 2,550 feet along Davenport Drive. This line will serve as the main source of natural gas for the CNG time-fill fueling station and also improve the City’s ability to serve its commercial natural gas customers within the industrial area.