Article published in The Lincoln Business Journal on 11/1/2005
Dark Fiber Solutions Helps Education Field with Surplus Fiber Optic Capacity

YORK, NEBRASKA - Some of the information services and entertainment you consume - phone calls, television programs, Internet connections - is carried by fiber optic cables. They're everywhere, buried in the ground or strung on utility poles. In fact, the nation's fiber optic network is overbuilt in many areas.

Dark Fiber Solutions, a company based in York, NE., is helping the owners of that fiber, principally cable television companies, to find profitable uses for their extra capacity.

"Cable companies around the nation have spent a lot of money on fiber infrastructure." CEO Gene Thaw said. "The fiber is literally at the curb of schools, hospitals and most businesses. The opportunities now are how to light up that fiber and make money."

The early emphasis of DFS was on educational applications, especially video-conferencing and distance learning.

"We currently connect more than 100 K-12 schools, community colleges and universities on our network," President Jack Dixon said. "The network extends from Omaha to North Platte, allowing educators to share resources and provide continuing education for students connected to the network."

The fiber network has made possible video enrichment programming for students separated by great distances. Recently DFS connected an elementary school in Connecticut to the Homestead National Monument in Beatrice, and the students watched a controlled prairie burn. Earlier this year, DFS connected York Elementary students to a Connecticut maple syrup processing facility to view tapping of trees and syrup production.

“It’s real-time, full-motion video and audio, and they can interact and ask questions,” Dixon said. “It’s rewarding to see the impact distance learning has had on kids here in rural Nebraska.”

Gene Thaw and his brother Mike founded Dark Fiber Solutions in 2000 at South Plainfield, N.J. The company expanded to York because it already managed a fiber infrastructure there for Galaxy Cablevision. Since Mike Thaw died last year, Gene Thaw and Dixon have been running the company between New Jersey and Nebraska.

DFS, which has 50 employees, contracts with cable companies in 12 states from the Northeast to the Midwest and the Gulf Coast. Revenues have been growing 15 to 25 percent a year for DFS, which has built on its educational successes to expand to other applications.

“In the beginning a lot of our focus was schools,” Thaw said. “Today we’re catering to businesses that want wide area network services. Instead of being locked into the phone company as their only option, we can come in and help them.”

In the educational field, DFS provides local area network management, videoconferencing and surveillance as well as Internet service. DFS also facilitates teleradiology for health care facilities, video arraignment for courts, and traffic monitoring for municipalities.

For business customers, data transmission is providing most important.

“Our core business is connectivity,” Dixon said. “Our secondary business in layering on applications that different types of businesses want. Connecting businesses that have multiple sites in various towns is the primary need now.”

Keeping up with evolving technologies is a challenge, Dixon said. Thaw sees competition from telephone companies as another.

“Soon telephone companies will be bringing fiber to homes,” he said. “They will be able to offer all kinds of services that the cable companies have had for 10 years or so. What we have to stay ahead on is the applications.”

Thaw, 53, is a veteran of the cable industry. He and his brother Mike started out selling communications products and fiber optics in the New Jersey area.

Beyond DFS, Thaw is active in local Republican politics and high school sports. He is the announcer at high school football games and does color commentary on the radio for the state playoffs. He lives in South Plainfield with his wife, Kathy, and they have two college-age children.

Dixon, 44, was born in Kentucky and has worked in the telecommunications industry for 23 years, starting as a cable television installer. He worked his way up through the technical ranks and then into the management of cable television systems all over the U.S., primarily in the Southeast.

Dixon is a Harley-Davidson enthusiast, taking his bike on major rides across Nebraska, and also enjoys competitive horseback riding. He and his wife, Shelley, have two children.

Both men are members of the Society of Cable Television Engineers and have been active at the committee level of the organization.

Now DFS is extending its reach again. The company is testing voice over IP systems to provide IP phone service to customers and working with business representatives and the governor’s office to put a fiber optic structure in place between North Platte and Scottsbluff.