Fiber optic technology uses light to pass data at high rates of speed.  Fiber optic backbone paths can be found along most railroad tracks and has been installed there for many years.  Fiber optic is known as the technology super media and what is needed to trend smoothly into the future.  Because we have so many interactions online over the Internet, fiber has the best delivery possibilities.

Our story starts in Chicago on August 11, 2011, at a Data Center near Cermak Avenue; known as the “Carrier Hotel”.  Carrier Hotel is where you will find all of the main carriers that deliver data and phone services across the United States.  At the time we had our corporate Servers in a rented set of rack space. 

During our visits to Chicago for Server maintenance, we developed relationships with the Data Center technicians, some of those on the carrier side in design and planning.  We found a technician that was a guru in fiber optics, over lunch we talked about the fiber optics networks in the state of Illinois.  Conversations lead to who was expanding, where the fiber was, and where it was going.  For many years we had looked to have fiber optic services delivered to our main plant in Kankakee; there were no real options available, one of the reasons the Servers were in Chicago.

After a few more lunches the idea of bringing a fiber network into downtown Kankakee was born on September 28, 2011; the idea was quite simple, but many unknowns at the time.  This was exciting, bringing in fiber would help our bandwidth needs, having fiber to sell along with other traditional ISP services was also interesting.  For many years we were a dial-up ISP, we have many wireless links and Wi-Fi Access Points throughout the City but always needed more bandwidth.  Bringing in fiber would be a huge project that would take lots of planning; it would also be a revenue source and add value to the property. 

We had the question arise “What would the City think?” running fiber and engineering is no small task. Would there be any interest in such services?   An initial meeting was set up on October 20, 2011, with Mayor Epstein and other City personnel; they all liked the idea of fiber and agreed it would be a great addition to the City.  Moving forward we (Tom Small, President) created the name Fabulous Fiber.  On November 4, 2011, we received a letter of support from the mayor supporting the fiber project.

So we set a plan in place for our first site visit with our fiber company to see the streets and locations of Kankakee where fiber would be available.  This was a walk-through of downtown Kankakee to determine the route of the fiber loop.  A fiber loop (Metro Ring) sets the network up with automatic redundancy and expansion.  After a day of walking around we now had the basic fiber routes down on paper and ready for engineering.  Next were several months of dealing with legal teams, vendors, and Project Management teams.  The teams involved were from the City of Kankakee, Daily Journal Network Operations Center, and Great Plains Communications.  

The initial fiber push was set into motion on N East Avenue and E Oak Street on April 17, 2012.