NaTel has provided the proverbial "last mile" installing its own local access network to connect Fairfield with the high-bandwidth inter exchange network, opening up a new world of telecommunications services to local hic-cap customers, bypassing the local exchange. NaTel has already installed some fifteen miles of fiber, in and throughout Fairfiield and Jefferson County, interconnecting the downtown city center, the industrial park, and almost every part of Fairfield to competing inter exchange points of presence (POP's). Expansion of NaTel local access network continues. NaTel also maintains its own point of interface in Cedar Rapids.

The installed plant owned and operated by NaTel makes it possible for customers to benefit from circuits that are entirely digital, with the highest possible quality, performance, reliability and lowest possible cost. The inter- exchange network operated by Iowa Network Services is deployed as a self-healing SONET ring. If a cable fails or is cut, the signals instantaneously and automatically continue in the other direction. This combination of fail-safe reliability with route diversity and high performance is only available in Fairfield from NaTel.

NaTel circuits are monitored 24 hours a day, 7 days per week. Local technicians are in constant pager and cellular telephone contact. In the rare instance of an outage, NaTel techs are paged immediately to correct any problems as they arise.

NaTel provides direct connection to the Internet via the INS regional exchange point (REP). The REP provides "double homed" connections to five of the largest IBP's (internet backbone providers), with 45 Mbps (megabits per second) connections to each of them. If one provider has a problem, sites can be reached through the others. Most Internet service providers (ISP's) have limited access to only one backbone provider, usually not directly at the backbone. NaTel delivers direct-connect Internet customers high-bandwidth multi-homed TCP/IP service. Users are able to reach anywhere on the Internet with fewer network hops.

Initially the principals of NaTel came together out of self-interest for their own urgently needed high-bandwidth services, and with a vision of providing 21st Century communication services to the community as a whole. To achieve this, NaTel is working closely with the city of Fairfield, Maharishi University of Management, and community leaders.