August 5, 2020 – After three weeks of on the job training, getting conduit run between buildings, working with ethernet cables the team is ready to start working through getting drops installed.
We established the goal of paying a minimum of $15 an hour for training and tasks that need to get done. We want to have two person teams to work on a task where of one person is watching another person work someone isnt making money. We set the price to run conduit between two buildings as $200 which includes the digging, going under a sidewalk and putting in a pull string to run ethernet cable. If you don’t run into any tree roots or get hung up under a sidewalk working hard the $200 works out to be $30 an hour.
On the current job site each building has 5 to 6 apartments with a meter room. We set the install price to run an ethernet cable that is tested from the meter room to the resident at $100. A team of two is assigned to each building and they work together to do the ethernet cable termination runs.
For the last 4 days the group worked together on one building at $15 an hour to figure out the best way to run cables and make sure the install looked good. Today the teams were assigned their buildings and they got busy and was amazing to see the progress that was made.
We are still working out the best way to deliver working internet in that each unit will have an ethernet cable terminated. We can use POE wireless access points mounted outside which has a higher cost but doesnt require going into the unit. Ultimately we want the ethernet cable terminated inside the unit but with COVID need to be respectful of interacting with residents.
We have been evaulating TP-Link wireless access points that can extend an existing wifi signal or if you plug in an ethernet port can be its own access point. What we like about TP Link product line is that you can connect it to the cloud and manage everything remotely from an app. This would allow tech support to resolve issues remotely and give parents the ability to restrict or grant access to web site by time and specific devices. Ultimately we want parents to be able to manage the internet access in their home. Getting close to needing to make those final decisions with the goal of being done in the next two weeks.
We had a full crew today and two new members were recruited in by existing team members. Everyone was very happy when we found two buildings that needed a conduit run and sidewalk to be tunneled under with water going through a pipe. It was clear as rookies you cant earn your stripes until you have run conduit under a sidewalk.
