ALLO Communications comes to Lincoln
Internet should only have two speeds: fast, and faster. | PC: journalstar.com
On Nov. 16, 2015, ALLO proposed to the city of Lincoln to partner and build a 100 percent fiber optics-based infrastructure. Mayor Chris Beutler and the city accepted the offer.
ALLO Communications, according to the Lincoln project site, is “a Nebraska-based telecommunications company formed in 2003 that offers local telephone, long distance, broadband, Internet and television service.”
Unfortunately, our campus already has high-speed internet via a fiber optic that’s been installed for over 10 years, so this new high-speed means of communication may not grace the hallowed halls of Union. However, according to IS Director Richard Henriques, if the rates ALLO offers are good, the school will consider using ALLO as the primary Internet provider.
Henriques also states the school considered using ALLO, but decided to wait and use Windstream because Windstream had been in the Lincoln area for awhile. He’s waiting to see how ALLO does on the market and expects to see good things out of them.
“It’ll be nice to have another competitor involved here. I think there were times when Time Warner and Windstream didn’t serve us well, but also many instances [when] they did,” he adds.
ALLO is offering to provide every business and home with high-speed internet via fiber optics by the year 2019. In addition to that, it’s agreed to install 1 gigabit/sec services to 100 government buildings and 10 gigabit/sec services to 50 government buildings at no extra cost, all in return for an annual maintenance fee of $500,000 over four years. The reason for this time frame results from a prediction that revenues from using this service will reduce the maintenance costs.
Now, for those of us who don’t have a clear idea of what fiber optics are, I went ahead and took the liberty of doing the dirty research.
Two primary concepts exist we must understand. The first is that data gets transferred using binary code (0s and 1s). The second is that light travels faster through a glass fiber than electricity through a copper wire. Combining the two concepts, we have a quicker method of transferring those 0s and 1s.
With the newly installed fiber optics infrastructure (along with its included specific router) the people of Lincoln will better be able to suit their online needs at faster rates (and crush their opponents).
To learn more about ALLO Communications and what it can do for Lincoln, visit
Sean Hendrix is a senior studying biomedical science