The U.S. is investing in fiber-optic internet. Here's what makes it run. - Marketplace

Congress has authorized trillions of dollars in new spending through the Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS and Science Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. In the series “Breaking Ground,” “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal is visiting communities across the country to look at how this infusion of federal dollars might change the economy — in complicated, invisible, even contradictory ways.

In this first episode of our broadband coverage, Ryssdal explores what a $42 billion investment in broadband from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law could mean for fiber-optic cable manufacturing in the United States.

Click the audio player above to hear the story.

One goal of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is to connect every household in the United States to high-speed internet. The law created the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment, or BEAD, program, to take that $42 billion and allocate a portion to each state, as well as several territories. From there, state governments are responsible for distributing grants internet service providers to get everyone connected.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, part of the Commerce Department, is administering the BEAD program. The NTIA wants states to prioritize fiber internet, because “we believe fiber is the technology that will grow with families’ internet needs over time,” an agency spokesperson said.

The Build America Buy America Act, part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, requires that BEAD funds be spent only on American-made optical fiber and fiber-optic cable.

This means that the American fiber supply chain will have to scale up to meet increasing demand coming from the federal investment.

To understand how fiber-optic cable is manufactured, Ryssdal toured a Prysmian manufacturing facility in Claremont, North Carolina, and spoke with leaders from the Italian-based company.

“We have 29 plants here in North America,” said Patrick Jacobi, senior vice president of digital solutions in North America. “I am one of only three manufacturers in the United States to draw our fiber and make our cable here in the United States.”

The Commerce Department confirmed that there are only three companies that make optical fiber in the United States that meet federal Build America Buy America standards. Optical fiber is a strand of glass that’s been “drawn,” or melted down, to about as thin as a human hair. Light passes through this glass carrying data, providing an internet connection. The fiber is then wrapped into cables so that it can be installed safely in the field.

The 1.2-million-square-foot manufacturing facility in Claremont is the only Prysmian plant in the world that produces both optical fiber and fiber-optic cable. As the BEAD money starts to ripple through the economy, this facility and others like it will have to produce more fiber and cable.

“We positioned ourselves to be able to support the needs of our customers that are going to receive that BEAD funding,” Jacobi said. “We will not be a direct recipient of any of that BEAD funding, which is managed by the states. It’ll go to your internet service providers, your co-ops, your municipals. Those people will collect on that funding, and then we will supply them with cable.”

About 280 people work at the fiber plant in two 12-hour shifts, starting at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. As the BEAD funding rolls out and demand for fiber increases, Prysmian expects to hire more workers.

Optical fiber starts with a thin tube made out of pure glass. In the center of the tube is the core — the piece of glass that light passes through.

Sand, chemicals and more glass are added to the tube until it grows to about the diameter of a soda bottle, Jacobi said. At this stage, the glass is called a preform. The preform is brought to the top of the fiber plant on the sixth floor for the “draw process,” where it’s melted and pulled down to a fiber-sized diameter.

“Draw is where we’re going to take that preform, and we’re going to draw it down to [a diameter of] 125 microns,” said Mark Smith, fiber selection and customer care manager at the Prysmian plant. That final size is about the diameter of a human hair.

The draw process goes from the sixth floor “all the way down to one,” Smith said. “They get it thinned down, they’ll work to get some coating on it, and this is where it goes onto the reel as a finished product.”

The reels of fiber look like large spools of thread. The biggest reels of fiber at the Claremont facility hold up to 500 kilometers — more than 300 miles — of fiber.

“The fiber is stronger than steel if you pull it,” Smith said. “However, if you tie it in a knot, it will snap. It’s glass.”

The last step before the fiber leaves this plant is a series of quality tests. This includes measuring how well data travels through each strand of fiber and making sure the fiber is strong enough to be installed in people’s homes.

“Their job is technically to try and break the fiber,” Smith said. “We would rather have the fiber break here than out in the field.”

After passing the quality tests, the fiber goes to a second plant on the same property — cabling.

“We take the fiber that you just saw produced and we enable it to live in the real world,” said Tracy Overcash, cable plant director. “We prepare it to be subjected to extreme temperatures, tensions, bending, the elements” by adding a series of plastic tubes and cables around the fiber.

Everything done in the cable plant, where 130 people also work in shifts around the clock, makes the fiber bigger. The first step is called buffering.

“The buffering line takes the very thin fiber, which is essentially glass, and you want to make sure that glass, when it gets out into the field, is protected from the elements and the transportation and handling,” said Stuart Parvess, operations manager. “We cover it with a protective gel so that it can actually move inside a protective plastic tube.”

These tubes often have 12 pieces of fiber inside of them. Multiple buffer tubes containing multiple strands of fiber continue to be wrapped around each other and layered. The final step of the process is called jacketing, putting the final protective layer around the tubes to create a cable that you’d see outside — what internet service providers purchase in order to install fiber internet.

“We start to get nervous around the jacketing area, because this is where the most value is on the reel,” Parvess said. Some cables are even wrapped in flame-retardant cable, depending on their final destination.

The finished cables are wrapped around enormous wooden spools. The biggest spools are 8 feet tall and weigh up to 7,000 pounds with cable on them. Pricing on these cables varies from pennies to tens of dollars per foot, depending on size and how many fibers are inside.

“Fiber is future proof,” Overcash said. “These cables that I’ve shown you that we’ve made today, we’re making those to be able to live outside for decades.”

Overcash, a North Carolina native, has been working for the company since 1996.

“In the last 60 days, somebody came down the road and put a fiber-optic cable in my front yard,” he said. “I do appreciate the irony of it. And I will say that I’m looking forward to which cable they bring in my house. I’m going to see what the brand is. I’m certainly happy to see fiber optics now, I would say later in my career, finally come to my home.”

Preview: Libraries are essential for internet access, even as national broadband projects ramp up

Part 1: The U.S. is investing billions of dollars in fiber internet. Here’s what makes it run.

Part 2: In national broadband rollout, rural landscapes pose a challenge

Part 3: How a small Kentucky town was 10 years ahead of the government

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