You’ve probably heard the old "Field of Dreams" quote a thousand times—if you build it, they will come. It’s a nice sentiment for a baseball movie. But in the world of telecommunications and fiber optics, if you build it strands refers to something much more concrete, expensive, and frankly, misunderstood. We are talking about "dark fiber" and the physical layers of connectivity that keep our world spinning. Honestly, it's the difference between a city that thrives in the next decade and one that gets left in the digital dust.
Connectivity isn't magic. It's glass.
Most people think the internet is a cloud. It's not. It’s thousands of miles of hair-thin glass strands buried under your feet or strung across poles. When a company or a municipality decides to "build it," they aren't just laying one or two cables. They are laying high-count fiber cables with 144, 288, or even 864 strands. The logic? The cost of the fiber itself is pennies. The cost of digging the trench is thousands of dollars. So, you overbuild. You build extra strands because you never want to dig that hole again.
The Economic Reality of Extra Strands
Why do we care about these specific strands? Because they represent latent potential. In the industry, we call unused fiber "dark fiber." It’s dark because there’s no light—no data—pulsing through it yet.
Think about it this way. If a construction crew is already tearing up a main street to fix a water pipe, the incremental cost of dropping a conduit with "if you build it strands" is almost zero compared to the total project cost. But if you wait until the street is paved and then realize you need more capacity for 5G small cells or a new school, you're looking at a multi-million dollar headache. This is where strategic infrastructure planning hits the real world.
It's about future-proofing. We see this in cities like Chattanooga, Tennessee, which famously built out its own fiber network. They didn't just build what they needed for 2010. They built for 2030. They laid the strands, and the economic growth followed. It wasn't just a "build it and they will come" gamble; it was a "build the capacity so they can come" strategy.
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Where the "Strands" Strategy Fails
But let's be real. It isn't always a success story. There’s a graveyard of municipal fiber projects where the "if you build it" philosophy turned into a "we built it and now we’re in debt" nightmare.
You can't just throw glass in the ground and hope a tech giant moves in next door. You need a "lit" strategy. The strands are the physical layer (Layer 1 in the OSI model), but without the electronics (the lasers and switches) to light them up, they’re just expensive sand.
- Some towns forget about maintenance costs. Glass breaks. Backhoes happen.
- Regional monopolies (the big ISPs) often lobby against these projects, making the "strands" legally difficult to lease out to competitors.
- Technology evolves. While glass lasts a long time, the way we multiplex signals (sending different colors of light down the same strand) changes.
If you don't have a plan to manage those strands, you're just sitting on a silent asset. It’s like owning a 100-lane highway in the middle of a desert where nobody drives.
The 5G and AI Connection
Right now, the demand for "if you build it strands" is exploding because of two things: 5G and Artificial Intelligence.
People think 5G is wireless. It’s only wireless for the last 100 yards. Every single 5G small cell—those boxes you see on top of light poles—needs a physical fiber connection back to the core network. It needs "backhaul." If a city hasn't laid the strands, 5G performance craters. You get those annoying "full bars but no data" moments.
Then there’s AI. Data centers are being built at a record pace. These centers aren't just islands; they need massive, redundant pipes of fiber to talk to each other. We are seeing a "land grab" for fiber strands between major data hubs like Northern Virginia and Hillsboro, Oregon. In these corridors, if you build it, the strands are often leased before the glue on the conduits is even dry.
Managing the Physical Layer
If you're a city planner or a business leader, how do you actually handle this? You don't just buy "fiber." You look at strand counts.
High-density cables are becoming the standard. We’re moving away from the old days of 12 or 24 strands. Now, if you aren't laying at least 288 strands in a backbone, you're wasting your time. You also have to consider the type of fiber. Single-mode fiber (SMF) is the gold standard for long distances, whereas multi-mode is mostly for inside a single building.
Technical Considerations for New Builds
- Micro-trenching: Instead of digging deep, wide trenches, crews cut a narrow slit in the pavement. It’s faster, cheaper, and lets you lay strands without shutting down a whole neighborhood for a month.
- Blow-in Fiber: You lay empty tubes (conduit) first. Then, when you actually need the strands, you use compressed air to "blow" the fiber through the tubes. This prevents the "if you build it" investment from rotting in the ground if the tech changes.
- Splicing Capacity: Every time you want to use a strand, someone has to "splice" it—essentially welding two pieces of glass together with a localized lightning bolt. It's tedious work.
The Politics of the Strand
There's a gritty side to this. Digging rights. Rights-of-way.
In many places, the "if you build it" approach is blocked by red tape. One company might own the poles, another owns the underground ducts, and a third has an exclusive franchise agreement with the city. This is why you sometimes see one side of a street with gigabit internet and the other side stuck on DSL from 2004. It’s not that the strands are hard to make; it’s that the permissions are hard to get.
Open-access networks are the solution some experts, like those at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), suggest. In this model, the city (or a private developer) builds the strands and then lets any ISP lease them to provide service. It creates competition. It makes the "if you build it" mantra actually work for the consumer, not just the monopoly.
Actionable Steps for Infrastructure Planning
If you are looking at fiber deployment—whether for a campus, a small town, or a commercial development—stop thinking about what you need today.
First, audit your existing conduit. You might already have "if you build it strands" that are just sitting there. Many older utility projects included "shadow conduit" that was never used. Mapping these can save millions.
Second, mandate "Dig Once" policies. If the city is opening a trench for any reason—sewer, water, power—there should be a law that says fiber conduit must be laid at the same time. This reduces the cost of fiber deployment by up to 90%.
Third, prioritize strand count over initial electronics. Electronics get cheaper and faster every 18 months. Glass in the ground stays the same for 30 years. Buy the best glass you can and the highest strand count your budget allows. You can always upgrade the lasers later, but you can't easily add more glass.
Fourth, consider the "middle mile." Everyone talks about the "last mile" (the connection to your house). But the "middle mile"—the strands that connect towns to the major internet exchanges—is where the real bottlenecks happen. If you're building, focus on creating a robust middle-mile ring.
The reality of "if you build it strands" is that connectivity is now a basic utility, just like water or electricity. We are past the point where fiber is a luxury. It’s the literal foundation of the modern economy. If you aren't building the strands now, you're essentially deciding to be invisible in the digital future.
Invest in the glass. Overbuild the count. Protect the rights-of-way. The data will come, but only if the path is already there.