Writer-Editor William Ferrall was the very first residential customer at our Fiber-to-the-Home pilot program at 255 Main Street Hyannis, a partnership with Cape Built Developers. Recently, we caught up with William to see how having OpenCape 100% high speed fiber is making his downtown Hyannis live/work experience even better.
Since moving over to Hyannis from Nantucket, in early 2019, I had been looking for a place to live on or near Main Street. I’ve spent many shoulder and winter seasons living in New York City, so I wanted to be near the action.
Discovering that 255 Main Street had an available apartment and would be “wired” with fiber optic broadband services made the building hugely desirable to me. I’m a longtime media professional with a ravenous appetite for news and information during almost every waking hour. I wanted assurances I can be “hooked-in” reliably to the Internet, television, and other media services whenever I need or want them.
Last September, I was both the first resident in the CapeBuilt redevelopment of 255 Main Street, which is a mixed residential-commercial building, and the first residential customer of OpenCape. I’m excited to be the first to benefit from what I know is a great asset for the future of downtown Hyannis. As a longtime early adopter of new technologies, I’m glad to see this realized and to be among the early users.
My primary work is in producing eight-10 electronic newsletters weekly, in addition to public relations, marketing, and other work related to time sensitive publishing. Reliable, consistent online service, with predictable and preferably speedy download and upload speeds, matters greatly to me. I can better estimate how much time I have available to complete a job, to meet a deadline.
Among the best things I can say about the OpenCape service in my apartment and building is I rarely notice it and have come to expect it will always be there when I go online. It helps ensure the reliability of building services like the door buzzer, alarms, and other systems.
That said, for a variety of reasons I also have service from the local cable provider, at least temporarily. If I’m connected to the cable service, I can predict the times when service will slow down. Switching over to my OpenCape service fixes that.
In the mid 1980s, I was the managing editor of the Boston-based trade journal Lightwave: The Journal of Fiber Optics, which was an industry leader in fiber optics technology in telecommunications, datacom, cable TV, and other technologies. We published story after story about the benefits that direct-to-home broadband services could bring to residences. We reported on the few projects happening then across the country. Three decades later, it’s well past time for this to be the common means of bringing entertainment and information services into homes.
For me, OpenCape services enhance the work I already do and makes my promises to clients more reliable. Undoubtedly, as the service grows, homes and businesses up and down the Cape will benefit. It puts us on the cutting edge of information and entertainment services for families who live here, including those of us who depend on at-home work.
