Broadband Stimulus Program Funds Fiber

22 | BROADBAND PROPERTIES | www.broadbandproperties.com | OctOber 2010

The final broadband stimulus awards were announced just ahead of the statutory deadline. Lots of new and interesting fiber builds are in the works.

By Masha Zager ■ Broadband Properties

Broadband Stimulus Program Funds FiberBroadband Stimulus Program Funds Fiber

Final RUS Awards for FTTH Projects

The two federal agencies responsible for disbursing broadband stimulus funds have now completed their awards, and awardees are starting to plan and build

their projects. Although we and others have noted that some of the money is being spent on dead-end technology, overall these programs should improve broadband access and op-tions for many Americans.

The Rural Utilities Service, which focused on first-mile projects, is funding many fiber-to-the-home builds, large and small, that will help to rapidly bring disadvan-taged communities into the 21st-century knowledge econ-omy. The National Telecommunications and Informa-tion Administration focused on middle-mile projects and

institutional networks; though few NTIA projects will con-nect homes or businesses with broadband in the short run, they should make bandwidth more affordable in existing broadband networks and should also make new, privately funded broadband builds more economically feasible. The NTIA grants may well be “gifts that keep on giving,” and we look forward to seeing their effects.

In this Fiber Deployment Roundup, we not only list the final awards to FTTH projects and report on awardees’ vendor selections, but we also profile several awardees, showing what their projects will mean for their communities.

– MZ

The final batches of RUS broadband stimulus awards included wireless, DSL, satellite and cable technologies, along with a siz-able helping of fiber. Projects that include FTTH are shown below. Most awards went to the small rural telcos that are traditional recipients of RUS broadband funding. However,

several went to rural electric cooperatives, and there were also four awards for countywide or multicounty public broadband networks. Though many awardees had prior experience with FTTH, quite a few appear to be embarking on their first fiber builds. (See earlier issues of BBP for more RUS awards.)

Provider State Amount($ millions)*

Potential Subscribers Prior FTTH?

Arrowhead Electric Cooperative www.aecimn.com

MN $16.1 11,363 residents, 138 businesses, 63 community institutions

Cass Countywww.casscounty.com

MO $26.0 25,900 residents, 710 businesses, 118 community institutions

Cedar Falls Utilities**www.cfu.net

IA $0.9 1,753 residents, 259 businesses in 89 square miles outside existing territory

x

Cross Telephone Company**www.crosstel.net

OK $17.6 52,000 residents, 4,180 businesses, 111 community institutions

x

Five Area Telephone Cooperativewww.fivearea.com

TX $2.5 498 residents, 235 businesses, 1 community institution x

Hill Country Telephone Cooperative**www.hctc.net

TX $12.2 4,200 residents x

OctOber 2010 | www.broadbandproperties.com | BROADBAND PROPERTIES | 23



Kit Carson Electric Cooperativewww.kitcarson.com

NM $63.8 20,500 households, 3,600 businesses, 183 community institutions, two Native American Pueblos

La Jicarita Rural Telephone Cooperativewww.lajicarita.com

NM $11.9 3,000 residents, 40 businesses, 8 community institutions

Lake County www.co.lake.mn.us

MN $66.4 37,000 residents, 1,000 businesses, 98 community institutions

LENOWISCO Planning District Commission/Sunset Digital Communicationswww.lenowisco.org

VA $20.2 42,000 residents, 1,550 businesses, 100 community institutions

x

Medicine Park Telephone Companywww.mptelco.com

OK, TX $3.0 4,500 residents, 3 businesses, 30 community institutions x

Midstate Communicationswww.midstatesd.net

SD $9.1 3,715 residents, 176 businesses, 28 community institutions

x

Midvale Telephone Exchangewww.midvaletelephone.com

AZ, ID $4.5 1,400 residents, 130 businesses, 7 community institutions

x

North Alabama Electric Cooperativewww.naecoop.com

AL $19.1 20,120 residents, 1,442 businesses, 53 community institutions

Orangeburg Countywww.orangeburgcounty.org

SC $18.7 9,078 residents, 90 businesses, 12 community institutions

Pioneer Telephone Cooperativewww.ptci.com

OK $35.9 9,800 residents, 160 businesses, 5 community institutions

x

Plains Cooperative Telephone Associationwww.plainstel.com

CO $11.1 2,740 residents, 272 businesses, 42 community institutions

Pride Network www.xfone.com

LA $36.2 25,243 residents, 2,978 businesses, 172 community institutions

x

Red River Rural Telephone Associationwww.rrt.net

ND, MN

$9.1 2,600 residents, 228 businesses, 6 community institutions

x

Saint Regis Mohawk Tribewww.srmt-nsn.gov

NY $10.6 3,750 residents, 200 businesses, 42 community institutions

Scott County Telephone Cooperativewww.sctc.org

VA $24.9 12,000 residents, 80 businesses, 16 community institutions

x

Sjoberg’s Cablewww.mncable.net

MN $.9 656 residents, 15 businesses, many small farms, 3 community institutions

x

Smithville Telephone Company**www.smithville.net

MS $7.1 1,795 residents, 15 businesses, 5 community institutions x

Southwest Telephone Exchangewww.interstatecom.com

IA $6.0 1,468 residents, 55 businesses, 9 community institutions x

Spruce Knob Seneca Rocks Telephonewww.spruceknob.net

WV $8.5 6,378 residents, 207 businesses, 23 community institutions

x

Stoneham Cooperative Telephone Corporation970-735-2251

CO $1.6 155 residents, 9 businesses, 4 community institutions

Sunset Digital Communicationswww.sunsetcom.net

TN $24.5 27,500 residents, 471 businesses, 65 community institutions

x (with LENOWISCO

Planning Commission)

Trans-Cascades Telephone Companywww.relianceconnects.com

OR $2.4 340 residents, 46 businesses, 3 community institutions x

Tri-County Telephone Membership Corp.www.gotricounty.biz/

NC $14.1 10,780 residents, 889 businesses, 32 community institutions

x

United Electric Cooperativewww.ueci.org

MO $21.2


Yadkin Valley Telephone Membership Corporation in North Carolina will use Zhone’s MXK intelligent GPON solu-tion and its zNID optical network termi-nals (ONTs) for its broadband stimulus- funded project. Since 2007, Yadkin has passed more than 16,000 homes and businesses with fiber – 42 percent of the premises within its footprint – and, with the help of the RUS grant and loan, it will now be able to reach the rural por-tions of its service area more quickly.

“One of the initial goals for our FTTH project was to reach all custom-ers within our regional footprint with fiber-based triple-play services by 2019,” explains Mitzie Branon, Yadkin’s gen-eral manager. “However, with the re-ceipt of the broadband stimulus funding and the support of Zhone as our GPON partner, we will be able to overcome the anticipated cost challenges and time-to-market requirements for the rural fiber extension and complete our entire FTTH project by 2015 – which is four years earlier than initially planned.”

Brian Caskey, chief marketing officer for Zhone, says the broadband stimulus initiative has accounted for an uptick in the number of fiber projects the com-pany has been asked to support.

Shawnee Telephone Company, whose RUS award we reported on in July, also selected Zhone’s multiservice access node for its Southern Illinois Sustainable Broadband Transformation

project. Shawnee was awarded $8.5 mil-lion in federal and state funds to connect homes, businesses, government offices and medical facilities in one of the na-tion’s most remote and underserved re-gions. Long distances between commu-nities and a dispersed population have posed challenges in bringing broadband access to the 90 Illinois communities that Shawnee serves. With Zhone’s plat-form, Shawnee can use a combination of broadband technologies, including GPON and ADSL2+, to provide high-speed access to even the most rural loca-tions in a cost-effective manner.

Halstad Telephone Company (HTC), Federated Telephone Coop-erative and Farmers Mutual Tele-phone Company have all selected GENBAND’s C15 compact softswitch to help deliver services over fiber. HTC, which received $11.7 million in broad-band stimulus funds, deployed the C15 to support advanced IP services in pre-viously underserved and unserved com-munities across Minnesota and North Dakota. Federated Telephone Coop-erative received $3 million to build an

FTTP network in the rural Morris, Minn., exchange, and Farmers Tele-phone Company received $9.7 million to build out fiber facilities and services to rural parts of its serving area. Both Federated and Farmers will deploy GENBAND’s C15 to increase network capacity, improve efficiency, lower costs and deliver advanced IP residential and business communications services. Tom Lorenz, operations manager of Federated Telephone Cooperative, says small and medium business customers will now be able to install unified communications, hosted call centers and videoconferenc-ing capabilities without having to invest in managing equipment on premises.

NTELOS, which received a broad-band stimulus grant to build out FTTH to 9,000 premises, will use ADTRAN’s flagship product, the Total Access 5000 Multi-Service Access and Aggregation Platform (MSAP) and Total Access 300 Series ONTs for the deployment. The Total Access 5000, with its all-Ethernet core, will enable NTELOS to provide both FTTH and broadband DLC ser-vices and significantly improve broad-

Stimulus Funding Recipients Select Vendors

INDEPENDENT TELCOS



Waitsfield-Fayston Telephone Companywww.wcvt.com

VT $5.6 1,385 residents, 56 businesses, 2 community institutions x

Willard Telephone Company970-228-4571

CO $0.8 1,900 residents, 8 businesses, 3 community institutions

Yadkin Valley Telephone Membership Corporationwww.yadtel.net

NC $21.7 12,803 residents, 606 businesses, 56 community institutions

x

* May be supplemented by funding from other sources**Includes wireless or DSL technology as well as FTTH

Broadband loans and grants will allow rural telcos to accelerate their plans for deploying fiber

to homes and businesses.


band penetration in this region. In ad-dition to this award, NTELOS will also deploy the ADTRAN platform through-out other portions of its service areas.

Glenn Butler, NTELOS vice presi-dent of wireline engineering and plan-ning, says, “We have deployed the Total Access 5000 in other parts of our net-

work and know its benefits firsthand. This product will allow us to quickly and efficiently expand our fiber network to the customer, providing higher broad-band speeds and IPTV service.”

Marquette-Adams Telephone Co-operative, which serves Adams and Mar-quette Counties of central Wisconsin,

chose the Occam Networks BLC 6000 multiservice access platform (MSAP) to extend its fiber network throughout the southern parts of its service area. Second-round stimulus grants and loans of $20 million will fund the fiber deployment to more than 4,600 previously unserved homes and businesses.

A family-owned business, Madi-son Telephone began operating in Madison, Kan., in 1946. Today, with the second and third generations of the founding family still at the helm, the company provides local and long-distance wireline phone service, broadband access and wireless phone service to 575 customers. “We try to offer as much as we can,” says CEO Mary Meyer, explaining that Madison extended fiber deep into rural areas so it could deliver ADSL throughout its entire service area.

In town, ADSL gave Madison enough capacity to compete successfully with the local cable company’s broadband offering. However, outside of town, where there were fewer than three customers per square mile, Madison could support only sub-megabit broadband. For farmers looking to do precision farming, 512 Kbps or 768 Kbps was woefully inadequate; even home broad-band users were unhappy. “When we speeded up the town broadband, we irritated the rural people, who de-manded to know when they’d be served,” Meyer says. “We knew we had to get fiber to the home, and the switch was 25 years old, but we couldn’t pay back a $7 million or $8 million loan.” She worried that a competitor would enter the market with better service.

When the Rural Utilities Service awarded the com-pany a $3.5 million grant and a $3.5 million loan to add to $.8 million in private funding, the project suddenly became viable. “We can see our way clear to pay back half the amount,” Meyer says. “Stimulus funding saved our company.” She was delighted to tell rural customers that the company hadn’t forgotten them, and that their turn would come soon.

SAWing THrougH rockBecause Madison had worked successfully with Calix to deploy ADSL, it selected Calix equipment for the FTTH de-ployment. The new network, which will reach every loca-tion in Madison’s service area, will include active Ethernet technology in the town – which is so small and compact that dedicated fiber does not significantly raise the project

cost – and GPON technology in the ru-ral area, where conserving fiber greatly affects cost. “We’ll use extended-reach GPON because of the distances we have to cover,” Meyer says. “Some

houses are as far as 15 to 18 miles from the central office. It’s a large, diverse area and it’s challenging. We’re in the heart of the Flint Hills, with rolling hills and trees. You need a rock saw 6 feet in diameter to saw a trench through the rock, then cable is laid in the trench.” The expense of dig-ging through flint is one reason the project was unafford-able without help from the stimulus program.

In addition to laying and lighting the fiber, Madison will replace its antique switch (“It’s on its last legs and a prayer”) with a new MetaSwitch softswitch.

The project timetable depends on this winter’s weather. Construction was scheduled to begin in Oc-tober; if the weather is mild, Madison could build out the FTTH network by the end of 2011, but Meyer says the second quarter of 2012 is more likely. The company has already begun educating customers about the ben-efits of fiber and querying them about where they want equipment placed on their property.

Initially, Madison will provide voice and Internet ac-cess; video service will have to wait until a new middle-mile fiber project brings the cost of bandwidth down to a reasonable level. A group of 29 telephone companies in Kansas is cooperatively funding the middle-mile fiber, and the Madison leg of the project is expected to be completed by the end of 2011. At that point, Meyer says, transport costs should decline considerably, and Madi-son plans to contract with another local independent telco to share its VoD service.

Meyer expects the upgraded communications net-work to be a boon for the entire area. She says, “The funding is a godsend for our company, our community, our employees and our subscribers. Just to keep a com-pany like this with nine employees in a small town is very vital for our community. We would just see people leaving to get [higher-speed broadband], and we didn’t want that to happen.”

BroadBand StimuluS award winner Profile: madiSon telePhone


“Our goal at Marquette-Adams is to deliver the highest quality of services possible to our subscribers so that they are not handicapped by living in a rural area,” says Jerry Schneider, the company’s general manager. “With the new funding, we will routinely deliver 100 Mbps access to our customers and will easily scale up to 1 Gbps with active Ethernet solutions from Occam. They have been a true partner throughout this stimulus application process and worked with us to maximize our network value.”

With the broadband stimulus funding, Marquette-Adams will leverage its existing core network and the Occam BLC 6000 to expand its fiber network 500 miles beyond the current serving territory, doubling the network to 1,000 miles in total. The flexibility of the Occam BLC 6000 MSAP and its support of active Ethernet and GPON will allow Marquette-Adams to reach subscribers regardless of where they live. In addition, by utilizing existing central office and transport equipment from Occam Networks, Marquette-Adams will keep the deploy-ment of new active electronics to a minimum and estimates an annual electricity and battery savings of $50,000.

Marquette-Adams started a six-year transition to an all-fiber infrastructure in 2008, using Occam’s BLC 6000 and a mix of GPON and active Ethernet technologies. More than 1,000 customers are currently served over this network, and the remaining 2,400 customers will transition to fiber by 2012. Fiber subscribers can access traditional voice and data services, as well as video services such as HD television programming.

Highland Telephone Cooperative selected the Calix Uni-fied Access portfolio to deliver advanced broadband services to 20,000 homes and businesses in rural Tennessee and Kentucky. “Just as the Tennessee Valley Authority brought opportunity and economic development to this region over half a century ago, we believe the broadband stimulus program is going to have the same impact in stimulating new development in this rural region of Tennessee,” says Fred Terry, general manager.

In the $66.5 million project, Highland Telephone will use a

combination of fiber access technologies. Services to residences, businesses and cell towers will be delivered over GPON, while transport over a redundant 10 gigabit Ethernet (10GE) fiber ring will be implemented primarily via the Calix E7 Ethernet Service Access Platform. The E7 platform will allow Highland Telephone to adapt efficiently to both low- and high-density service areas in its network and deliver up to 100 Gbps of band-width to each half-rack-unit slot, which is expected to meet the service demands of this regional network for a decade or more. Calix’s C7 multiservice access platform will also be used to provide 10GE transport as well as business services support.

Applications will include RF video overlay with RFoG in-teractive technology, Metro Ethernet Forum services for busi-ness, and mobile backhaul. Several Calix 700GE and 700GX ONTs will be used, each capable of delivering broadband speeds of up to 1 Gbps and optimized for the targeted appli-cations. Highland Telephone Cooperative also intends to use Calix Professional Services for engineering, furnish and instal-lation services.

A PreSenT For SAnTA clAuS: Fiber To THe HoMePerry-Spencer Rural Telephone Cooperative (PSC) has deployed the Occam BLC 6000 multiservice access platform (MSAP) in an FTTH project that serves Christmas Lake Vil-lage in Santa Claus, Ind. “It has always been PSC’s goal to assist in the economic development of our rural community by providing quality and affordable telecommunications ser-vices,” says Daren Brown, plant manager of PSC, noting that the company would add new and more video services and more Internet bandwidth.

Since February, PSC has installed a mix of active Ethernet and GPON technologies in the BLC 6000 MSAP, transitioned some ILEC customers from copper and added new CLEC cus-tomers to a fiber-based network. In addition to the new fiber deployment in Santa Claus, PSC added active Ethernet to serve business customers from its existing 10GE ring. The network was initially deployed for fixed wireless backhaul and has facilitated the convergence of wireless and business Ethernet traffic. PSC is currently connecting small and medium businesses and hospi-tals with high-speed voice, video and data over copper, fiber and native Ethernet services. Occam currently supports more than 2,000 total access lines throughout PSC’s service network.

In August, Cincinnati Bell’s Fioptics network powered the Western & Southern Financial Group Masters & Women’s Open, two top-ranked tennis events held at the Lindner Fam-ily Tennis Center in Mason, Ohio. Cincinnati Bell was chosen as the exclusive provider of fiber-optic video and broadband services for the tournament and also broadcast closed-circuit coverage throughout the tournament site. Jim Ruehlmann,

Marquette-Adams Telephone will double the size of its fiber network and save $50,000 per year in electricity costs.

Digital • VOD • VoIPData • Hotel PPV

800.882.7950www.glds.com

Cable BillingBilling & Provisioning

Over 300 Satisfied Operators

Lowest Total Cost Solutions

FTTH, Voice, Video & Data

Friendly, Expert Support


Cincinnati Bell VP for business market-ing, says, “Our Fioptics networks are engineered to serve the needs of large-bandwidth customers who demand high speed and reliability.”

Finally, the original RUS programs still exist and are still helping rural telcos upgrade their infrastructure. The RUS recently awarded $3.7 million from its Telecommunications Loan Program to Bernard Telephone Company, an Iowa ILEC. The company will use it to up-grade its network to fiber to the home.

coMPeTiTiVe ProViDerS builD ouT Fiber RST Communications, a new CLEC operating in North Carolina and South Carolina, selected Motorola’s GPON solution to deliver services throughout its fiber-to-the-home network. RST will provide broadband IP voice, video and data delivery, as well as smart-grid and other energy-management applications. RST is addressing markets that include municipalities, residential subdivisions, hotels and hospitals.

Hiawatha Broadband Commu-nications, a competitive provider that already serves a number of small Minne-sota communities, is extending its FTTH network to the city of Red Wing.

The first step in the process, accord-ing to Dan Pecarina, HBC vice president for technology, is to extend fiber from the current network terminus north of Wabasha through Red Wing – a project that involves the cooperation of the city of Red Wing, the Red Wing Port Au-thority, the Red Wing Area Chamber of Commerce, Goodhue County, the state of Minnesota and other organizations.

The fiber extension was engineered as part of HBC’s application for a first-round ARRA grant. Even though the grant request was denied in January, business opportunities in Red Wing and Lake City, including the Red Wing Port Authority’s proposal to build a technol-ogy incubator, prompted HBC’s board to approve the extension of the network.

Construction is scheduled to be com-pleted in November, and the network will serve customers along the route with voice and data services. “It’s not the full FTTH project that we want,” says Gary Evans, HBC’s president and CEO,

“but it is a huge first step in that direc-tion. We know that Red Wing residents won’t rest until the full project is done, and HBC has the same resolve.”

Allo Communications introduced its new Fiber TV service to customers in western Nebraska. Allo Communi-cations customers will receive IPTV service with 74 HD channels, remote

DVR, on-screen Caller ID and integra-tion with voice and Internet access. Allo Communications’ IPTV network relies on Microsoft Mediaroom middleware and is managed and integrated using 180SQUARED’s v.Allegro solution set – software and services that help provid-ers plan, deploy and manage a complete IPTV implementation.

WHERE FIBER MANAGEMENT COMES TOGETHER.

People

Information

Technology

Join the conversation with your network

peers at www.FiberPuzzle.com.

@ClearfieldFiber www.ClearfieldConnection.com 800.422.2537

New at Clearfield:Clearview xPAKAdvances small count fiber deployment.


All eyes are on EPB Fiber Optics, the municipal FTTP network in Chatta-nooga, Tenn., which received nation-wide attention in September when it an-nounced it would offer the only citywide 1 Gbps broadband service in the United States for both residential and business customers.

EPB already offers triple-play services to more than 100,000 homes and busi-nesses in metropolitan Chattanooga and surrounding rural areas and will soon offer services to every home and busi-ness in a 600-square-mile, nine-county area. EPB is also using its network as the backbone for its smart grid, which will provide increased power reliability, greater operational efficiency and more power management tools for the utility’s electric customers.

The new 1 Gbps symmetrical service offering is the fastest broadband service in the United States and is tied with a handful of international communities for fastest in the world. At least three of the providers offering 1 Gbps service – including not only EPB but also Hong Kong Broadband Network Limited and ZON Multimedia (Portugal) – are us-ing Alcatel-Lucent’s GPON technology.

“Chattanooga is light years ahead when it comes to providing ultrafast broadband,” says Tom Edd Wilson, President and CEO of the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce. “By of-fering the fastest available speeds to a whole community comprising a diverse population living in both urban and ru-ral areas, Chattanooga has become the living laboratory for today’s innovations and tomorrow’s companies.”

In the same week EPB announced its 1 Gbps service offering, HomeServe USA, a provider of home warranty and repair services, announced plans to establish a new customer care center in Chattanooga that will employ 140 people. According to local press, the

availability of the EPB fiber optic net-work was a major factor in HomeServe’s decision.

EPB appears to have inspired other municipal providers to market ultra-high-speed offerings. Shortly after its 1 Gbps announcement, the CEO of Bristol Tennessee Essential Services,was quoted as saying that his company would soon follow suit because “everything they can offer, we’ll be able to offer.” In addition, LUS Fiber, the municipal pro-vider in Lafayette, La., raised its top-tier residential offering to 100 Mbps. (LUS already had a 100 Mbps commercial offering.)

bVu oPTineT PArTnerS WiTH PlAnning coMMiSSionBVU OptiNet, the municipal tele-com utility of Bristol, Va., announced a strategic partnership agreement with Cumberland Plateau Company (CPC), a division of the Cumberland Plateau Planning District Commission in rural southwestern Virginia. Through this new 10-year agreement, BVU will con-tinue to provide telecommunications services over fiber to organizations in CPC’s footprint. By partnering with BVU OptiNet, CPC has brought re-dundant fiber optic broadband service to its district, spurring an influx of new employers and high-tech jobs. “Building broadband services throughout this re-gion is vital to our economy,” says Larry Carr, executive director of CPC. “If you have high-speed Internet services avail-

able, you’re at least a player in the pro-cess of recruiting business.”

The city of Highland, Ill., a small city outside St. Louis, Mo., decided to deliver triple-play services over fiber when it determined that a lack of broadband al-ternatives adversely affected quality of life and economic activity in the city. High-land will use a combination of GPON and active Ethernet technology from Calix, which just announced that it had shipped its millionth fiber access port.

Utah-based open-access operator UTOPIA announced PAETEC as the 12th service provider to join its network. PAETEC offers data, voice and IP ser-vices to business customers, along with enterprise communications management software, network security solutions and managed services. Todd Marriott, UTO-PIA’s executive director, says the move by PAETEC, which is the first national provider recruited by UTOPIA (it serves more than 84 of the top 100 Metropoli-tan Statistical Areas and has customers in all 50 states), is “great validation of the improvements and growth we’ve seen over the last two years.”

Jackson Energy Authority (JEA) selected Tantalus as its smart-grid tech-nology platform. JEA, a Tennessee mu-nicipal utility located midway between Nashville and Memphis, operates an FTTH network that has provided triple-play services since 2004. Now it is roll-ing out demand-response applications, such as smart thermostats and load con-trol, in addition to implementing smart

Super-Fast Broadband from Municipal Fiber Systems

MuNICIPaL FIBEr

EPB, the municipal provider in Chattanooga, Tenn., announced 1 Gbps Internet service

citywide. In the same week, HomeServe USA said it would build a new call center there.


metering to more than 100,000 electric, water and gas endpoints. The project also includes deployment of electricity meters with remote disconnects, which will give JEA a practical way to stop and start services without site visits.

Fibrant Communications, the municipal operator in Salisbury, N.C., which is nearly ready to launch, will ri-val any services the big-name providers can offer, according to Michael Crowell, Salisbury’s director of broadband ser-

vices. Crowell says, “We’ll have much more bandwidth than the others, and we’ll be offering a superior level of cus-tomer service” – including four high-

definition streams into homes, a capa-bility not previously available in this market. Fibrant expects this service to be especially attractive to young people,

Fibrant, the municipal operator in Salisbury, N.C., expects to launch services in November that rival

anything the big-name providers can offer.

South central Telcom was one of the earliest independent telcos to de-ploy fiber to the home. After provid-ing telephone service in rural Kansas for nearly 50 years, the company de-cided to offer broadband in 2001 and almost immediately discovered its aging copper plant wasn’t up to the task. To deliver broadband, it obtained an RUS loan and upgraded its facilities. At that time, says planning director Eric Ryker, fiber still cost 25 percent more than copper to deploy, “but the right person made a presentation to the board, the board agreed with the recommendation and we’re happy to have started so early.” Today, about 85 percent of the company’s 1,600 ILEC customers – all except those in the highest-cost ar-eas – are served with fiber.

Several years later, the company also began to over-build portions of its CLEC area with fiber, starting with the most profitable neighborhoods. Today, its customer penetration in CLEC fiber areas is 60 percent, compared with about 35 percent in the CLEC areas where it resells service over incumbents’ copper loops.

Fiber to the home has become important to the economy of SC Telcom’s service area. Steve Allen, SC Tel-com’s marketing manager, says a number of local busi-nesses have taken advantage of this robust infrastruc-ture, including a safety solutions company that conducts live training sessions over the Internet as well as several companies that have set up high-speed connections among their multiple locations. Several residents have started Internet-based businesses, and businesses in general are beginning to look beyond the local commu-nity for customers.

Residential subscribers have become avid users of broadband video, online gaming, Facebook and other applications. Allen says the older generation is more in-terested in sharing family photos and staying in touch,

while the younger generation is inter-ested in “using the computer as a TV rather than fighting over the remote control.” A number of customers have signed up for high-speed Internet ac-cess specifically for gaming.

Fiber To THe rAncHWith the broadband stimulus program, SC Telcom saw an opportunity to extend fiber into its most rural ILEC territory, where cattle ranching is the primary occupa-tion and density is less than one home per mile. It also decided to enter the small town of Attica as a com-petitive provider, both because Attica residents had no wireline broadband available and because the town is close enough to SC Telcom’s ILEC territory to be served by existing employees. Allen says, “We talked with At-tica community leaders, such as the schools and the city, prior to submitting our application, and we got a pretty good response – they encouraged us to pursue it. So we performed a survey, which came back pretty positive.”

The rural ILEC project was funded in Round 1 of the stimulus program with an $871,000 grant, and the Attica project was funded in Round 2 with a $558,000 grant and a $560,00 loan. (Both projects also include private fund-ing.) Because the Round 1 award wasn’t quite sufficient to build fiber to the entire area, SC Telcom is considering a mix of fiber and fixed wireless as an interim solution. If RUS accepts the revised plan, wireless broadband will be used to reach the most remote customers.

In Attica, SC Telcom plans to deploy Calix’s active Eth-ernet technology, even though it has used PON technol-ogy – first BPON and then GPON – for the better part of a decade. Ryker says, “We believe active Ethernet probably has a longer life today than GPON, plus it’s easily upgrad-able and has huge bandwidth.” Construction is scheduled to start in the spring, and the company is already looking for a site for a new central office.

BroadBand StimuluS award winner Profile: South Central telCom


i3 America is conducting the first U.S. trial of its fiber-through-the-sewer technology.

consistent with the city’s goal of attract-ing and retaining young professionals.

Fibrant is using Clearfield fiber man-agement systems, including FieldSmart Fiber Crossover Distribution System (FxDS) patch panels in its headend and FieldSmart Fiber Scalability Centers (FSC) or PON splitter cabinets in the field. Crowell says, “For four years we looked at a lot of alternatives. Ultimately, we selected Clearfield’s cabinets because of their size and compactness. We didn’t want to go into our neighborhoods and install refrigerator-sized boxes. We knew the people wouldn’t like that. Clearfield had a definite advantage of size. They’re small and compact. Most people don’t even know they’re there.”

Crowell also admired Clearfield’s el-egant design: “It’s real easy to go into the cabinet and put in a jumper. We didn’t have to have special training for our technicians. … There’s also good storage capability within the cabinet so you don’t just have a bunch of patch cables looking like spaghetti. They have been designed so it’s really easy to keep your cables in a neat and orderly fashion.”

i3 AMericA AnnounceS FirST PiloT ProjecT The city of Quincy, Ill., approved a pilot project with i3 America, the U.S. divi-sion of British fiber deployer i3 Group, to demonstrate the company’s fiber de-ployment technologies and methods. i3 Group builds fiber optic networks using ready-made ducts, including the sewer system. Although the company has al-ready begun several ambitious projects in the U.K., the pilot project in Quincy will be its first in the U.S. market.

“U.S. homes and companies need access to high-speed broadband, and i3 America’s mission is to bring afford-able fiber networks to cities and regions across the country,” says Elfed Thomas, CEO of i3 Group, which is in “serious discussions” with several communities

in addition to Quincy – particularly communities that offered themselves as candidates for Google Fiber.

“Quincy will benefit from installing a fiber-to-the-home network, and we are very interested in seeing how i3 America may be able to work with us to achieve this goal,” says Mayor John A. Spring. “The pilot project, with no financial ob-ligation for the city, will allow us to test i3 America’s technology and construc-tion methods as well as gauge the com-patibility of our sewer system for a pos-sible rollout to the entire community.” The pilot project timeline includes four days for deployment followed by a 30-day evaluation period.

i3 America’s business model is to de-ploy the network, light the fiber (mostly with GPON equipment), install its provi-sioning software and then contract with a network operator to run the network and with service providers to offer services. Its fiber-through-the-sewers technology, which the company says can save between 30 percent and 50 percent of deployment costs, involves placing coated fiber, which it manufactures, along the bottom of the inside of the sewer. (Other kinds of conduit, such as water mains and steam pipes, can also be used.)

The WiredWest consortium in west-ern Massachusetts took another step for-ward in September when delegates from WiredWest towns decided to establish the organization as a public cooperative made up of member towns. Choosing public cooperative status enables Wired-West to move forward legally, practically and financially. Work on other aspects of the project, including engineering, busi-ness planning and financing, is proceed-ing simultaneously over the next several months to ensure that WiredWest is po-sitioned to secure financing and begin construction as soon as enough towns join the cooperative.

In Danville, Va., nDanville’s pilot FTTH project was voted down by the

city council – at least for the time being. nDanville is a three-phase project that began with an institutional network, added fiber to businesses and Wi-Fi hotspots and was slated to continue this year with fiber to the home. Despite the strong positive response to the city’s mar-ket survey, council members were wary of lending money for the pilot project in the current economic climate.

locAliTieS PrePAre To leASe Fiber To buSineSSeS Carroll County, Md., announced a partnership agreement with the Mary-land Broadband Cooperative (MDBC) to provide local businesses and service providers with access to the county-owned fiber optic network. The county’s economic development department hopes to spur commercial and industrial business growth by providing cost-effec-tive fiber connectivity to businesses.

The MDBC, a public-private part-nership, will lease fiber from the county, and MDBC members – including gov-ernment entities, service providers and businesses – will be able to lease dark fiber from MDBC. Larry Twele, direc-tor of economic development, says, “The Carroll County Fiber Network is a sig-nificant economic development initia-tive that will benefit the business com-munity for years to come. With our own fiber optic network, high-speed broad-band access will be more readily avail-able and affordable. Carroll County is now better positioned to be more com-petitive for business attraction and bet-ter prepared to keep and grow our exist-ing business base.”

The City Council of Edmonds, Wash., voted unanimously to pursue a policy of leasing some of the city’s ex-cess dark fiber to generate revenue and attract new businesses. Edmonds, which installed fiber to connect its municipal buildings, has excess capacity on its net-work. The city council resolution prom-ises to “review any legitimate contract or opportunity that serves the interest of the citizenry of Edmonds.” According to local press reports, possible markets for the fiber include other government entities, private businesses, educational institutions and medical facilities.


One of the most ambitious and un-usual stimulus-funded projects is VTel Wireless’s Wireless Open World (WOW) initiative, which aims to com-bine FTTH and 4G wireless technolo-gies on a large scale and spur broadband adoption with its Rural Broadband Farm Forum program.

Vermont Telephone company, or VTel, is one of the largest family-owned telephone companies in the United States and has served southern Vermont since 1890. Mi-chel Guité, the current owner, president and CEO, bought the telco from Contel/GTE in 1994 with a view toward im-proving the telecommunications services in the region. For years, he says, he has “wrestled with the broad topic of how we might survive as a rural telco,” an exercise that has shaped his company’s technology strategy.

Nearly a decade ago, Guité hoped to transition VTel from a copper-based to a fiber-based carrier but immedi-ately ran up against the problem of excessive bandwidth costs. The company paid nearly $1 million per year in transport charges just to support DSL, and Guité realized

that, to continue providing broadband at all, he needed a more economical source of Internet access.

When middle-mile carriers proved unresponsive to the company’s

needs, VTel created its own transport network, spend-ing $15 million over several years to build or buy 1,500 miles of fiber from Montreal to New York City and across New Hampshire to Boston. “We were digging under Lake Champlain,” Guité says. “It was long and hard, but we put up the first dense wave-division multiplexing (DWDM) network in Vermont.” The network gave VTel the ability to supply bandwidth to its own customers at a reasonable cost and wholesale excess capacity to the region’s universities and other institutions.

Fiber or WireleSS?With the fiber transport network completed, Guité again considered transitioning to fiber in the access network. This time, he was talked out of it by one of his wholesale customers – Mark Silis, director of telecom infrastructure

BroadBand StimuluS award winner Profile: Vermont telePhone

Today’s residents have unprecedented expectations of their television, Internet and phone services, and yesterday’s networks just can’t keep up. Connexion Technologies creates some of the most cutting-edge networks in the industry, and can customize them to fit the needs of your property – all while using our capital. Through our partnerships with national service providers, you can offer all of the services your communities want and attract new residents, while generating ancillary income for your property.

Let us upgrade you: cnxntech.com or call 919.535.7329


at MIT. According to Guité, Silis warned him that the FTTH equipment on the market was still not sophisti-cated enough to be worth investing in. Silis advised him to invest in wireless licenses instead.

Although VTel did begin building FTTH on a small scale, Guité took Silis’ advice and set about buying wireless spec-trum, much of it in the 700 MHz range. “We spent our own money – a huge capital investment – trying to do the best job we could in our own narrow area,” Guité says.

STiMuluS ProgrAM To THe reScueBy the time the broadband stimulus program arrived, VTel was a profitable company with great depth of wire-less and fiber resources. Guité’s instinct – contrary to most of the advice he received – was still to extend fiber to the premises if possible, largely because “the prob-lem with Springfield [VTel’s home base] is that any com-pany that’s successful here moves out.” Though a hedge fund might exploit its current assets and move on, Guité thought a family business should behave otherwise.

However, leveraging the company’s resources by building out the last mile would take anywhere from 15 to 20 years – if the company even survived the process. In the stimulus program, Guité saw an opportunity to build faster and with less risk. In Round 1, VTel proposed de-livering 1 Gbps to every home in its service area via fiber and, at the same time, delivering 4G wireless broadband to every home in southern Vermont, using LTE technol-ogy. “Let’s try to make our existing phone company a re-ally exemplary demonstration of what good technology using fiber can be,” he explains, adding that he believes a combination of fiber and wireless broadband will ul-timately be most attractive and most beneficial to cus-tomers. However, the proposal fell on deaf ears.

In the second round, calculating that he had nothing to lose, Guité upped the ante by proposing not only giga-bit fiber to all VTel’s customers but also 4G wireless broad-band throughout the entire state of Vermont and parts of New York and New Hampshire. The wireless network is targeted to Vermont’s 33,000 unserved households; Guité explains, “Although the signals cover all of Vermont, the network isn’t optimized the way it would be to serve the whole state – it’s optimized to get to the unserved.”

This time, possibly because Google had popularized the concept of gigabit fiber, the Rural Utilities Service found the proposal exciting and funded it in its entirety with an $82 million grant and a $35 million loan.

At the same time, Guité proposed – and won – a $12 million NTIA grant to improve the middle-mile infra-structure in northern Vermont. Arguing that the short-age of bandwidth and transport capacity had slowed the deployment of resources for such initiatives as dis-tance learning, access to Internet2 and remote access to large databases and libraries, VTel proposed expand-ing its fiber network to deliver up to 10 Gbps Ethernet broadband to more than 200 high schools, hospitals, higher-education institutions, telephone companies and public-safety entities.

THe rurAl broADbAnD FArM ForuMFinally, building on the successful experience of the De-pression-era Radio Farm Forum and many third-world community development projects, VTel proposed a Ru-ral Broadband Farm Forum. Through this program, field workers will organize thousands of neighbor-to-neigh-bor, small-group meetings to discuss how broadband can help find jobs, improve schools, launch businesses, access government assistance and enhance rural life.

Saying the program would “win broadband hearts and minds,” Guité asks, “Why not have forums with fam-ily members of stroke victims talking about how they might help with rehabilitation? Math teachers could talk about doing a better job with broadband for distance learning. Anesthesiologists could talk about broadband helping them access data with portable laptops.”

As part of the WOW project, VTel is also working with utilities to test smart-grid applications over 4G wireless networks. Guité says, “Our goal is to create the first state with 100 percent smart grid and broadband.”

Here’s how VTel’s website sums up its message to its subscribers:

We are committed to making this happen. Rolling out broadband is good for us, good for Vermont and good for the American people. The funds are available, the plan is in place and time and effort are all that is required to bring this to fruition.

New Visions Powerline Communica-tions (which, despite its name, is now focusing on fiber to the home) launched 110 Mbps/30 Mbps Internet service to residential and business customers on the west side of Syracuse, N.Y., using GPON technology. “Gone are the days

when someone connected a single PC to a cable modem,” says Carmen Branca, president of New Visions. “Our higher-tier customers are usually networked within the home using a wireless router, and they’re connecting a desktop com-puter, two or three laptops, a gam-

ing console, Internet photo frame and countless other devices to their home networks. When these applications run simultaneously, it’s easy to see how faster services will be needed. ... Virtually all applications benefit from an increase in speed.”

New Vision for Syracuse

OThEr DEPLOyErS


AT&T and Regency Apartments an-nounced an agreement to deliver U-verse triple-play services to the 316 units at Windsor West Apartments in Cham-paign, Ill. – one of the first fiber-to-the-unit projects AT&T has deployed in Illinois. (AT&T will soon face competi-tion in Champaign from the municipal UC2B project, which is building a fiber optic network to connect community an-chor institutions and will make its fiber available to residential service providers.)

Windsor West is a newly constructed apartment community that overlooks a five-acre lake and features geothermal heating and cooling and energy-efficient windows and doors. The agreement between AT&T and Regency Consoli-dated Residential is part of the AT&T Connected Communities program.

In Canada, where the federal regula-tory agency recently ordered incumbent telcos and cable companies to make their advanced networks available to competitive providers at a 10 percent markup, Bell Aliant is now rolling out its FibreOP network in Charlottetown and Summerside, Prince Edward Is-land. Bell Aliant says it is investing $20 million to serve approximately 30,000 homes and businesses in Charlottetown and Summerside by the end of 2011. As part of the project, the provincial

government is providing $300,000 for workforce training and has entered into a three-year extension of its existing ser-vice agreement with Bell Aliant. Premier Robert Ghiz says, “Access to high-speed Internet service is an ingredient of eco-nomic and social development across the island community. We’re happy that Bell Aliant will make this fiber-to-the-home network available to business, educators and homes on Prince Edward Island.”

Bell Aliant also announced that it had launched FibreOP in the Greater

Moncton area of New Brunswick. Cus-tomers in the city of Dieppe are the first to be able to order FibreOP services, closely followed by the town of Riv-erview and the city of Moncton. In addi-tion, Bell Aliant announced that Killam Properties’ Forest Hill Towers, a newly renovated, 151-unit high-rise building in Fredericton, New Brunswick, will be the first FibreOP-enabled multiresiden-tial building in Atlantic Canada. Killam partnered with Bell Aliant to retrofit the building with fiber to the unit.

AT&T U-verse in Champaign

rBOC uPDaTE

VeNdoR SPoTligHT180SQUARED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.180squared.comADC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.adc.comADTRAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.adtran.comAlcatel-Lucent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.alcatel-lucent.comCalix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.calix.comClearfield . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.clearfieldconnection.comGENBAND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.genband.comHitachi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.hitel.comi3 America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.i3-america.comMetaSwitch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.metaswitch.comMicrosoft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.microsoft.comMotorola . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.motorola.comOccam Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .www.occamnetworks.comTantalus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .www.tantalus.comZhone Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.zhone.com

Troy Cablevision is using the Hitachi Node+Zero RFoG product to provide services in the greater Troy, Ala., area to about 1,600 business and residential subscribers. Continuing deployments in 2010 are expected to reach an additional 1,100 customers.

“We began deploying the Hitachi Node+Zero RFoG modules about one year ago, delivering video, data and

voice services,” says Dick Freeman, Troy Cablevision president. “We find they perform flawlessly, and the all-fiber net-work provides advantages for both busi-ness and residential customers, includ-ing uniform service quality, increased reliability, lower powering and reduced maintenance costs.”

According to Michael Allen, Hitachi vice president of sales, “Troy Cable has

steadily increased their use of the Hitachi Node+Zero RFoG solution, and it has proven to be an easy migration from their existing hybrid fiber-coax outside plant to a fiber-to-the-premises configuration. Operators like Troy Cable are realizing the economic and network efficiency of maintaining their existing RF headend infrastructure while enjoying the benefits of fiber as a last-mile architecture.”

Troy Cablevision deploys RF over glass

CaBLE COMPaNIES


reservation Telephone coopera-tive has served the farms, ranches and small towns of central North Da-kota for 60 years, providing the con-nections that keep this large, sparsely populated territory in touch with the rest of the world. Although its 5,700-square-mile territory has only about 9,000 access lines, RTC has provided many of its subscribers with broadband, using cable, DSL and, most recently, fiber to the home.

In 2007, when preparing to embark on some major construction – including upgrading the telephone and cable networks in its larger towns and installing new plant to serve lakeside cabins for vacationers – the com-pany decided the time was right to begin a complete transition to fiber to the home. The FTTH project, which was expected to take seven to 10 years altogether, is now about one-quarter complete. Old copper, includ-ing a great deal of messy-looking aerial plant, is being scrapped, and all customers are being cut over to fiber.

To justify the fiber rollout, RTC offers as many services as possible, including IPTV. Its first FTTH project yielded a video take rate of 70 percent, which the company found encouraging, considering that satellite TV was a strong competitor.

“When you build fiber to the home, it’s a big expense, so it’s important that the customer take services,” says Brooks Goodall, RTC operations manager. “Our goal is the triple play. For that, you’ve got to provide good video, and we feel that ours is good – we have local news and weather. Phone service is dying, but we try to tie that in. And now we’re putting in security cameras for businesses and cabin sites.”

Local businesses have welcomed fiber connectiv-ity because it allows them to operate much more effi-ciently. Pharmacies are now operating remote offices via video link. Other multiple-location businesses save on IT costs by using centralized servers instead of duplicating hardware and databases at each location.

RTC also provides fiber-based services to institutional customers, including cities that are attaching fiber to water meters; hospitals that are extending telemedicine services to outlying clinics; a local college; military instal-lations and, of course, cellular providers that require ro-bust backhaul capability. “Whatever a customer wants, we can provide,” Goodall says. “We just hope people need more and more.”

THe booMShortly after RTC started its FTTH build, a boom began in the Bakken Shale Oil Field, which stretches from Canada

to North Dakota and Montana. (Al-though the field was mapped in the 1990s, most of the oil was not eco-nomically recoverable until recently.) Parshall, the town of 1,000 where RTC is headquartered, became the center of much of the oil exploration activity.

“It’s turned this place upside down,” Goodall says. “It’s brought people in here like you wouldn’t believe. It’s not only affected us but all our communities. … They’re building houses unbelievably fast, and the people moving in want service – phone, In-ternet, video, security cameras and cell backhaul. We’re getting a lot of use out of the fiber.”

In addition to serving new arrivals, RTC is extending fiber to wellheads so oil companies can monitor their wells with IP cameras and respond quickly to leaks. “They’re doing a lot of stuff with fiber that we never dreamed of three years ago,” Goodall says.

Fiber To THe reSerVATionThe most remote portion of RTC’s territory, which makes up about a quarter of the land area, is the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation from which the company took its name. Because of its isolation, Fort Berthold was not one of the first areas RTC scheduled for a fiber build-out. However, the oil boom and the stimulus program changed the company’s priorities.

The oil boom brought back many reservation resi-dents who had left to find work elsewhere. They returned not only because they could work in the oilfields but also because they could move in with family members or live in campers on the reservation. Some are build-ing new houses there, and water and electric utilities are also being built out. “There’s a town that had a popula-tion of 50, and now it’s close to 1,000, with campers and everything,” Goodall says. “With all the people moving in, they’ve maxed out the copper plant.”

When broadband stimulus funding became available, RTC applied for $21.9 million in loans and grants. It was awarded funding in Round 1 of the Broadband Initiatives Program. The funding will help build out fiber to homes, businesses, schools and libraries on and near the reserva-tion and to connect the tribal government facilities that provide social services, health care and public safety. Goodall says tribal government officials, who are located in several far-flung towns, will now hold meetings via vid-eoconference instead of having to drive long distances.

RTC selected GPON technology from Calix for its build. However, it has designed its network to be easily converted to active Ethernet by placing GPON splitters

BroadBand StimuluS award winner Profile: reSerVation telePhone CooPeratiVe


in the central offices instead of in the field and by us-ing ONTs that can handle both technologies. With this architecture, Goodall says, RTC is future-proofing the company. Plowing the extra fiber was not significantly more expensive, he says, and because active Ethernet has a longer lifespan, “in the long run, it’s a lot cheaper.”

Fiber connectivity solutions, which are provided by ADC, include LSX 288 fiber panels (which Goodall says “are a little more forgiving, look a lot better, and are easier to run”), plug-and-play splitter chassis, fiber entrance cab-inets, OMX fiber frames, fiber guide systems, FDH3000 OSP cabinets and RealFlex bend-insensitive ONT cables.

Although bend-insensitive cables are used most often in MDUs, Goodall chose them because they function well in North Dakota’s 110-to-minus-40 temperature range.

For its IPTV middleware, the company chose Micro-soft Mediaroom. Goodall says Mediaroom has appeal-ing features such as fast channel change – and, more important, Microsoft is likely to survive the middleware shakeout, stay in the IPTV business and continue to up-grade and support its product. RTC is one of the first companies in the United States to deploy the Hyper V, or small-server architecture, version of Mediaroom, which was virtualized to make it economical for small telcos.

3150 SW 15th Street | Deerfield Beach, FL 33442 | 888.293.5856 | 954.427.5711 | [email protected] www.amt.com

Stocking Distributor for:

Fiber Equipment at the speed of light.AMT is your source for: System Types:

1310 Transmitters1550 TransmittersEDFA’sRFoG Micronodes1310/1550 ReceiversCouplers & Jumpers

RFoGPONHFCL-BandDigital VideoEthernet

®

Multiple Solutions. One Source.

AMT 26966 Broadband_Ad_MECH:AMT 26966 10/30/09 2:58 PM Page 1

Reservation Telephone is in an unusual situation: Its fiber-to-the-home build will support tribal services on the Fort Berthold Reservation –

still a high-poverty area – and will also support the once-in-a-century oil boom that’s going on in the same place at the same time.


dePloyeR SPoTligHTStates with deployments referenced in this article

Alaska

norTH AMericAn TelcoSAllo Communications www.allophone.comAT&T www.att.comBell Aliant www.bellaliant.caBernard Telephone

Company www.bernardtelephone.comCincinnati Bell www.cincinnatibell.comFarmers Mutual

Telephone Company www.farmerstel.netFederated Telephone Cooperative www.fedtel.netHalstad Telephone Company www.halstadtel.comHiawatha Broadband Communications www.hbci.comHighland Telephone Cooperative www.highlandtel.netMadison Telephone www.madtel.comMarquette-Adams

Telephone Cooperative www.ma-central.comNTELOS www.ntelos.comPerry-Spencer Rural

Telephone Cooperative www.psci.net

Reservation Telephone Cooperative www.reservationtelephone.com

RST Communications www.rstcommunications.comShawnee Telephone Company www.shawneetelco.comSouth Central Telcom www.sctelcom.netVermont Telephone Company www.vermontel.comYadkin Valley Telephone

Membership Corp. www.yadtel.net

oTHer norTH AMericAn DePloyerSBVU OptiNet www.bvu-optinet.comEPB Fiber Optics www.epbfi.comFibrant Communications www.fibrant.comHighland, Ill. (city) www.ci.highland.il.usJackson Energy Authority www.jaxenergy.comNew Visions Powerline

Communications www.nvplc.comQuincy, Ill. (city) www.quincyil.govTroy Cablevision www.troycable.netUTOPIA www.utopianet.orgWiredWest www.wired-west.net

INTErNaTIONaL DEPLOyMENTS

Read all these stories and more in the digital edition at www.bbpmag.com/bbponline.php

National Broadband Network in Australia is saved ... Ericsson connects India’s Commonwealth Games ... Telefonica Chile pledges $2.5 billion for FTTH... BT brings fiber to Cornwall

Documents

Broadband Stimulus Program Funds Fiber