Experimenting With Fiber - Broadband Properties

30 | BROADBAND PROPERTIES | www.broadbandproperties.com | January/February 2011

In a unique collaboration, Hancock Telecom, a cooperative in Indiana, has merged with Central Indiana Power so it can deliver smart-grid services, along with the standard triple play, over fiber to the home.

Hancock was an early adopter of FTTH technology and has built out fiber to nearly all premises in its service area. Central Indiana Power, an electric co-op whose territory overlapped Han-

cock’s, was interested in automated me-ter reading and also wanted to prepare for the demand-response initiatives pro-posed by the Wabash Valley Power As-sociation, the regional power provider.

The two cooperatives, which had collaborated on other projects, agreed to transmit the meter readings via Hancock’s FTTH network – and then agreed that merging their operations would simplify the joint effort.

After the Indiana General Assembly approved a legal change that allowed the companies to merge, cooperative members ratified the action by large majorities, and the merger took place at the beginning of 2011. Deployment of smart-grid technology can start im-mediately in the original Hancock Telecom service area; the company also hopes to build out fiber in the rest of the power utility territory, where it can offer competitive telecom services.

Tim Hills, formerly president of Hancock Telecom and now president of the merged entity, NineStar Con-nect, says, “I know this is being watched closely throughout the nation, both on the telecom and electric side. I would hope we’re on the cutting edge.”

Before the merger took place, Cen-tral Indiana Power selected Tantalus as the technology platform for its smart

Fiber to the home inspires providers to try out new applications and services.

By Masha Zager ■ Broadband Properties

Experimenting With FiberExperimenting With Fiber

Sometimes, fiber-to-the-home providers seem to be en-gaged in a bandwidth race: In this roundup alone, Fibrant Communications launches with 100 Mbps

service, Verizon offers 150 Mbps, and Bell Aliant ups the ante to 170 Mbps. Not that we’re complaining – it’s great for businesses and individuals to be able to order up the band-width they need.

But FTTH is also inspiring other, more interesting ex-periments with services that range (again, just in the next few pages) from the smart grid to TV Everywhere, from business continuity to home monitoring and video surveil-lance. Verizon is experimenting with a feature that lets cus-

tomers “flick” photos from their iPads to their televisions. Alcatel-Lucent and Motorola, in addition to selling their own networking equipment, are both helping customers in-tegrate and install a version of Microsoft Mediaroom IPTV middleware that is scaled for smaller telcos.

Another sign of the times: A start-up operator in Mary-land announced the first major U.S. deployment of WDM-PON, one of the new generation of FTTH technologies that will eventually displace GPON. We’ll be interested to see what subscribers will do with the capabilities that WDM-PON enables.

– MZ

Find out more about new FTTH services at the Broadband Properties Summit in Dallas, April 26–28.

Hancock Telecom Merges With Electric Co-op To Deliver Home-Run Fiber Services

INDEPENDENT TELCOS

January/February 2011 | www.broadbandproperties.com | BROADBAND PROPERTIES | 31

grid. Eric Murray, Tantalus president and CEO, comments, “By collaborating with Hancock, CIP can extend connec-tivity to other points in the distribution network via the telecom’s existing infra-structure. It’s a logical next step that will accelerate smart-grid rollout, avoids the cost and complexity of building and maintaining two separate communica-tions networks, and consolidates billing, customer service and many other busi-ness functions under one roof.”

Tom Seng, president and CEO of Central Indiana Power before the mer-ger, says the utility-telecom alliance creates a new breed of cooperative. “Broadband opens the door to fantastic entertainment and education opportun-ities and so much more. When used in combination with Tantalus’ smart-grid technology, it will enable us to introduce new programs that can help members save money on their monthly bill and improve customer service, which are both central to our goals.”

FTTH CommuniCaTionS ParTnerS WiTH Filmon Fiber-to-the-home provider FTTH Communications, a competitive telco in Minnesota with about 1,200 sub-scribers, launched a strategic partnership with Internet-based FilmOn.com for TV Everywhere–type services. Through the multiyear partnership, which is FilmOn’s first OEM deal, FTTH will allow subscribers to watch its cable net-work channels on mobile devices or over the Web. FTTH will share a portion of its incremental revenues with FilmOn.

“The FilmOn platform gives our subscribers the ability to see our con-tent virtually everywhere,” says Jeffrey Feldman, president, FTTH Commu-nications. “The platform adds a service that separates us from much larger cable networks and quickly adds subscribers to our all-digital cable network.”

“FTTH is an excellent initial partner to provide the FilmOn Mobile platform to its subscriber base as a manageable test group,” says Alki David, founder

and CEO, FilmOn. “Cable providers small and large see the importance of extending their cable service beyond the television and the home, which the FilmOn Mobile platform can provide quickly and easily.”

FilmOn has made its OEM platform available to network affiliates, cable networks, individual channels and con-tent providers that want to get into the online broadcast business quickly and inexpensively. The Java-based platform can deliver HDTV-quality content over virtually any mobile device, PC or lap-top with an Internet connection.

Through integration with Comscore Beacon, content providers can provide advertisers with detailed user analytics. However, FilmOn has been sued by the major television networks, and its legal status is currently in doubt.

mileSToneS For GVTC, CinCinnaTi BellGVTC, a cooperative provider in Texas, passed the halfway point of its $35

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million fiber network upgrade project. In 2010, the company brought fiber to 4,729 homes, for a total of more than 9,350 since the project began in 2007. GVTC says its investment is already paying dividends with a highly reli-able network for customers and lower

maintenance costs for the company. The company, which offers 40 Mbps In-ternet access, recently boosted its cable television lineup by adding 13 channels, with nine of them in high definition.

Cincinnati Bell also announced a milestone, with more than 25,000 Cin-cinnati and northern Kentucky house-

holds now subscribing to its Fioptics product suite. Fioptics offers digital tele-vision with more than 325 channels as well as Internet access with speeds up to 100 Mbps.

Three-time stimulus award winner Halstad Telephone Company (HTC) selected ADC’s fiber connectivity and management solutions for its FTTP net-work. The network deployment, which began early in 2010 and is expected to be completed in mid-2011, includes residences and businesses in Hillsboro, N.D., and six exchanges in and around Halstad, Minn. Tom Maroney, chief ex-ecutive officer of HTC, says, “With its compact and easy-to-use design, ADC’s equipment, such as the LSX panel, can be installed quickly and economically, making it a good fit for our needs. Also, ADC’s fast response to our unique de-ployment challenges more than met our expectations.” (ADC is now a subsidiary of Tyco Electronics.)

Currently, HTC provides residen-tial and business data services to 2,500 locations. With the almost 280 miles of fiber added in 2010 and nearly 300 miles of fiber optic cable to be added in the months ahead, HTC will be able to increase its broadband capability to 100 Mbps at these locations.

Granby Telephone Company (GTC) launched a multiphase FTTH initiative in southwestern Missouri that uses fiber management equipment from Clearfield. The first phase of the deploy-ment, affecting approximately 2,500 subscribers, is scheduled to be com-pleted next summer; the entire project is slated for completion in 2014.

Kevin Johnson, the project man-ager, says, “The biggest selling point to our customers has probably been the value this will bring to their homes. Re-altors tell us that a property’s worth is much greater if it has fiber to the home. Eventually this brings people on board. Whether customers are trying the Inter-net for the first time or they’re taking bigger and broader services packages, it has significantly increased our sales in these areas where fiber is already up.”

To manage the many fibers in this active Ethernet deployment, GTC is using Clearfield’s FieldSmart Fiber

With the broadband stimulus funds awarded, the Rural Utilities Service turned its attention back to the Telecommunications Infrastructure Loan Program. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack recently announced $247.9 mil-lion in loans for FTTH projects in 11 states (see below), saying, “These loans help provide the level of financial assistance required to deliver health care, educational, social and financial services to benefit rural economies.”

Of the companies listed below, Cordova Telephone Cooperative, nelson Telephone Cooperative and Southwest arkansas Telephone Cooperative will be building fiber to the home for the first time.

ruS loan recipient State loan amount ($ millions)

Central Montana Communications (Triangle Communications)

www.itstriangle.com

MT $38.8

Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Telephone Authority

www.crstta.com

SD $37.9

Cordova Telephone Cooperativewww.ctcak.net

AK $10.8

Garden Valley Telephone Company www.gvtel.com

MN $34.2

Interstate 35 Telephone Company www.interstatecom.com

IA $7.1

Nelson Telephone Cooperativewww.nelson-tel.net

WI $22.1

Range Telephone Cooperativewww.rangeweb.net

MT, WY

$18.0

Reservation Telephone Cooperativewww.reservation-telephone.com

ND $32.3

South Central Telephone Associationwww.sctelcom.net

KS $10.2

Southern Montana Telephone Companywww.smtel.com

MT $5.5

Southwest Arkansas Telephone Cooperativewww.swat.coop

AR $22.4

Tularosa Basin Telephone Company www.tularosa.net

NM $8.6

RUS FUndS FibeR PRojectS


Crossover Distribution System, a cus-tom-configured system of fiber man-agement components. The components used in this configuration will be Clear-view Patch and Splice Cassettes and FxDS Tie Panels loaded with multifiber breakout-style cables.

South Slope Cooperative Com-munications Company, Iowa’s largest telephone cooperative, is also partnering with Clearfield on an FTTH deployment that will ultimately cover 310 square miles between Iowa City and Cedar Rap-ids, Iowa, and cover South Slope’s entire ILEC service area. The company, which has already offered FTTH for six years, has approximately 2,500 subscribers in 16 Iowa communities. Like GTC, South Slope is using Clearfield’s FieldSmart Fi-ber Crossover Distribution System.

West Carolina Tel, a telephone co-operative in South Carolina, is nearly finished rolling out FTTH throughout its incumbent service area – a project that was driven largely by the compa-

ny’s desire to provide high-quality TV services to its customers. Now nearly 15,000 of its customers will have access to IPTV as the company deploys Alca-tel-Lucent’s preintegrated Triple Play Express (TPE) solution.

TPE is a packaged, end-to-end IP video solution scaled for regional op-erators, utilities and municipalities with as few as 5,000 IPTV subscribers. This TPE deployment will include the micro-architecture version of the Microsoft Me-diaroom platform, along with video on demand, HDTV, remote DVR, an Op-erator Mosaic Channel, an applications dashboard and enhanced Caller ID.

According to local press, Cass Com-munications, a rural provider in Illi-nois, is building fiber to the home in the town of Literberry. Outside the town, a WiMAX extension to the fiber network will provide broadband services to rural residents.

Calix announCeS CuSTomer WinSAs telcos ramp up their stimulus-funded projects, vendors are seeing the re-wards for their patience in the form of contracts for hardware, software and construction services. As of December, Calix, the dominant FTTH electron-

”The biggest selling point to our customers has probably been the value this will bring to their

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ics vendor in the rural telco sector, was selected as the electronics vendor for last-mile stimulus projects totalling about $225 million. (Only about 15 per-cent of project costs are accounted for by network electronics.) Recent customer wins include the following:

Wikstrom Telephone Company (Wiktel) will build a GPON and VDSL2/ADSL2+ network that will serve an estimated 12,000 people, 1,500 businesses and 83 community institu-tions in rural Minnesota. The network will be engineered around a Calix E7 Ethernet service access platform 10GE ring and will use the E7 and E5-100 Ethernet service access node platforms with the 720GE family of optical net-work terminals (ONTs).

Two other Minnesota telcos, Fed-erated Telephone Cooperative and Farmers Mutual Telephone Company, selected the E7 Ethernet service access platform and 700GX/GE families of ONTs. “Lac qui Parle County is benefit-ting from a confluence of events and re-sources that will have a transformational impact on our county for decades to come,” says Pam Lehman, executive di-rector of the Lac qui Parle County Eco-nomic Development Authority.

“Until now, residents and businesses in the southern half of our county were severely limited in their ability to access broadband. Once this project is com-pleted, we believe, our county will have one of the most advanced broadband infrastructures in the country. We have very high expectations for the future economic and community benefits that this project will provide to the thousands of residents and hundreds of businesses and farms.”

Southwest Telephone Exchange, a subsidiary of Interstate 35 Telephone Company in Iowa, is building a network

designed by HunTel Engineering that consists of a 10 Gbps Ethernet transport ring connecting Calix’s C7 multiservice access platform and E7 Ethernet service access platform. Each residence, busi-ness and community institution will receive GPON services terminating at a variety of 700GE ONTs.

Baldwin Telecom Inc. (BTI) se-lected the E7 platform for a project that will use GPON technology to bring voice, video and high-speed data services to more than 1,500 unserved or under-served households, small businesses and institutions in Troy, Wis. BTI will de-ploy the modular E7-2 platform in com-bination with 725 ONTs.

Palmetto Rural Telephone Coop-erative (PRTC) of Walterboro, S.C., the only non-stimulus-related deployer in this group, is deploying the E7 plat-form and a variety of 700GX ONTs to upgrade its entire network infrastruc-ture to GPON. Services will include IPTV, VoIP and Internet access capable of up to 1 Gbps.

PRTC also plans to use GPON for mobile backhaul to facilitate advanced mobile services in the region. In total, more than 9,500 homes, 150 businesses and many cell towers will benefit from this seven-year phased initiative.

oCCam announCeS CuSTomer WinSOccam Networks, whose acquisition by Calix is pending as we went to press, has also been designated as the vendor for many stimulus-related projects. Recent announcements of customers that se-lected Occam’s BLC 6000 multiservice access platform for their FTTH net-works include the following:

C-M-L Telephone Cooperative will deliver IPTV and other high-speed services in northwestern Iowa. “There’s a real community excitement at the pros-

pect of bringing advanced broadband services such as IPTV to the area,” says Bruce Johnson, president and CEO of C-M-L Telephone Cooperative. John-son says the new high-speed network will greatly benefit small-business own-ers in the area, many of whom work out of their homes.

Benton Ridge Telephone plans to extend high-speed services in its north-western Ohio service areas to rural communities without access to wireline broadband. Rick Rostorfer, telephone systems manager at Benton Ridge Tele-phone, notes, “This award enables us to bring the rural areas up to speed, provid-ing subscribers with the opportunity to improve their quality of life through bet-ter access to resources.”

Mountain Rural Telephone Coop-erative Corporation will build out fi-ber across four counties in eastern Ken-tucky. Once completed, its network will reach more than 15,000 businesses and residences in a mountainous area with little existing infrastructure.

In a non-stimulus-related project, New Windsor Telephone, Reynolds Telephone and Woodhull Telephone Company will offer services to custom-ers in rural counties across west-central Illinois. The companies are members of the Western Illinois Video (WIV) Group, a consortium formed to enable its members to offer advanced video ser-vices. Consortium members share an IPTV headend located at Oneida Tele-phone Exchange, another consortium member. With many member compa-nies migrating to FTTH, the group se-lected Occam’s BLC 6000 platform for its mix of DSL, Gigabit Ethernet and GPON technologies.

“Fiber is obviously the way of the future for New Windsor to be able to provide the advanced services, DVR functionality and HDTV our custom-ers demand,” says Troy Nimrick, general manager. “A real aid to our success has been the ability to work across a variety of broadband technologies and across WIV member companies on Occam’s BLC 6000 platform.”

A longtime Occam customer, New Windsor began deploying active Eth-ernet for an FTTH project serving its

”Fiber is obviously the way of the future for New Windsor to be able to provide the advanced services, DVR functionality

and HDTV our customers demand.”


CLEC territory last year. Reynolds Tele-phone also deployed Occam’s GPON solution for an FTTH project serving its local exchange earlier this year. As the newest Occam customer, Woodhull Telephone Company is embarking on a complete fiber overbuild of its network, with plans to offer all customers ad-vanced IP services.

ComPeTiTiVe ProViderS In October 2010, XFONE held a ground-breaking ceremony in Burkbur-nett, Texas, to mark the beginning of construction of its PRIDE fiber-to-the-premises network. The network, funded

with $54 million in loans and $45.9 million in grants from the broadband stimulus program, will serve 19 Texas communities with fiber; a WiMAX overlay will bring advanced broadband services to the Texas plains and southern Louisiana markets. XFONE subsidiary NTS already operates a large FTTH network in western Texas.

En-Touch Systems continues to work with equipment vendor Enablence as it brings all-optical connectivity to new residential communities in greater Houston. A facilities-based local ex-change carrier that provides FTTH ser-

vices to about 6,000 subscribers in 25 master-planned residential communi-ties (and also provides HFC services in older communities), En-Touch also uses Enablence technologies to serve a grow-ing number of business customers of all sizes. For the coming year, En-Touch says, it will invest significantly more in Enablence equipment – more than two-thirds of it for ONTs – to deliver advanced triple-play services over fiber. En-Touch services also include alarm monitoring, advanced in-home tech-nology, and retail energy delivery and management.

At the end of the third quarter, Veri-zon’s financial reports showed that the FiOS network had passed 15.4 million premises, or approximately 60 percent of the company’s domestic wireline foot-print. This compares with about 15.9 million at the end of the second quarter. In July, Frontier Communications pur-chased Verizon networks that included 568,000 homes passed by fiber (accord-ing to Frontier’s calculations), so Verizon deployed essentially no fiber in the third quarter, and it remains a long way from its original target of 18 million homes passed by fiber at the end of 2010.

However, Verizon has continued to actively market the homes already passed. During the third quarter, there were 226,000 net FiOS Internet and 204,000 net FiOS TV customer addi-tions – the largest net quarterly increase in more than a year. By the end of the third quarter, Verizon had 3.9 million

FiOS Internet and 3.3 million FiOS TV customers. Marketing agreements and sales to multiple-dwelling-unit proper-ties continued to grow, with more than 1.6 million units open for sale.

FiOS Internet penetration (custom-ers as a percentage of potential custom-ers) was 31.0 percent by the end of the quarter, with the product available for sale to 12.5 million premises. For FiOS TV, penetration was 27.2 percent, with the product available for sale to 12.1 million premises. The divestiture to Frontier makes comparison with prior quarters difficult. However, Verizon re-ports that penetration rates continue to grow in mature FiOS markets; in many mature markets, penetration rates now exceed 35 percent, with a few markets in excess of 40 percent.

FiOS revenue, including for digital voice service, grew 29.2 percent year over year. By the end of the third quar-

ter, FiOS accounted for about 50 per-cent of Verizon’s consumer wireline rev-enues. Monthly average revenue per user (ARPU) for consumer wireline services was $86.55 in third-quarter 2010, up 10.9 percent from third-quarter 2009. ARPU for FiOS customers was more than $146.

Verizon TurnS uP FioS TV, enTerPriSe lanSIn December, the company turned up FiOS TV services in six communities in California’s Coachella Valley, with a total of about 55,000 homes and businesses. FiOS TV also went live in Hopedale and Holbrooke, Mass., after the boards of selectmen in those cities granted cable franchises to Verizon. This brings to 110 the number of Massachu-setts communities in which FiOS TV is, or soon will be, available.

Verizon Business also continues to work with Motorola to deploy its Opti-cal LAN Solutions in enterprises. Russell Investments, a global financial services firm, recently selected the Optical LAN Solution as the fiber-to-the-desktop tech-nology for its new headquarters in Seattle. Russell’s goal was to reduce power con-sumption to its trading floor while sup-

Verizon Adds More Than 200K FiOS Customers in 3Q10

RBOC UPDaTE

In 3Q10, Verizon added more than 200,000 net FiOS customers in communities where it had

already built out fiber to the home.


porting connectivity for laptops, printers and wireless access points along with ap-plications such as VoIP, videoconferenc-ing and video surveillance. According to Verizon, the Optical LAN Solution can significantly reduce power consumption, decrease space requirements and control capital costs compared with a traditional switch-based Ethernet solution. In addi-tion to providing the new networking in-frastructure, Verizon Business connects Russell’s offices with a managed private IP network service based on multiproto-col label switching.

neW FioS SerViCeS FiOS subscribers continue to receive new features and capabilities. FiOS TV cus-tomers who have iPads (subscribers who don’t already have iPads can buy them from Verizon) can manage their DVRs and browse VoD offers remotely. They can also use their iPads as remote controls for their set-top boxes. (These capabilities were already available on other types of mobile devices.) The iPad application has

virtually the same functionality as the standard TV remote. New iPad features to be added over the next few months include photo flicking, which allows cus-tomers to flick stored photos from the iPad to the TV, one photo at a time.

Another new service is Flex View, a TV Everywhere offering that lets cus-tomers take VoD programming outside the home to watch on compatible smart phones, tablets and laptops. The service launched with more than 1,400 movie titles, and available content is expected to grow rapidly – and to encompass us-ers’ personal content in addition to VoD. Because Flex View is a download service rather than a streaming service, users can watch without an Internet connec-tion available. There is no additional subscription fee for Flex View.

Just because Verizon isn’t playing with Google TV doesn’t mean it isn’t playing with Google. The two compa-nies recently signed a partnership agree-ment that allows users of Google TV

Ads to buy advertising on FiOS TV. (Google TV Ads is an online market-place where advertisers buy and measure national cable television advertising.)

Finally, Verizon introduced a 150 Mbps/35 Mbps Internet tier, first for consumers and then for small businesses in 12 states and the District of Columbia.

do We Hear 170 mBPS?A few weeks before Verizon’s 150 Mbps announcement, Canadian telco Bell Aliant introduced 170 Mbps/30 Mbps service in its FibreOP network for both residential and business customers.

At present, FibreOP is available in only a few communities in New Bruns-wick and Prince Edward Island. Last year, however, Bell Aliant said it would invest an additional $350 million in 2011 and 2012 to extend FTTP to more than 600,000 homes and businesses; this project recently got under way, with UniTek Canada performing the engi-neering and construction work.

Two cable providers recently chose the Calix E7 platform to deliver fiber-based services. Cox Business, the fourth-larg-est provider of business Ethernet services in the United States, has deployed the E7 and a variety of Calix 700GX ONTs

to deliver fiber-based Ethernet services over point-to-point Ethernet and PON technologies to small and medium-sized businesses.

“Fiber-based Ethernet services de-liver efficient, flexible and robust busi-

ness data transport at a significantly lower cost than competitive solutions,” says Dan Estes, executive director of technology, Cox Business. “The modu-larity of the E7 is well-suited to our op-erational model, allowing us to pay as we grow as we pull fiber to fiber access nodes deeper in the network and incre-mentally add new customers.” Cox is in-stalling the E7 in remote, outdoor Calix ODC-100 cabinets, which are located in business centers such as office parks and high-density commercial areas.

The second cable provider, West-man Communications Group, will use the Calix E7 platform, along with 725GX ONTs, to provide GPON-based residential services in Brandon, Mani-toba. The initial deployment will be in the new subdivision of Oakridge Es-tates, but Westman has regional expan-sion plans for the future.

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Fibrant Communications, the mun-cipal provider for the city of Salisbury, N.C., launched its fiber-to-the-home services in November with symmetrical broadband speeds of up to 100 Mbps. Susan Kluttz, mayor of Salisbury, calls Fibrant the fastest network in the Char-lotte region for both business and resi-dential customers.

Fibrant plans to roll out higher speeds over time, including a 200 Mbps residential tier, still in the planning stages, which would make the network the fastest in the state of North Caro-lina. Fibrant already offers up to 1 Gbps broadband service for business users.

The city of Dunnellon, Fla., has set up a telecom service provider, Green-light Communications, to build and operate an FTTP network, using GPON technology from Zhone Tech-nologies. Zhone’s MXK multiservice ac-cess node will enable triple-play services to residents, businesses and facilities such as fire stations, city buildings and police headquarters.

In addition, the solution will accom-modate video surveillance, telecom-muting and other value-added services to generate revenue and encourage eco-nomic development. Greenlight is also reported to be deploying Microsoft Mediaroom for its IPTV solution, with Motorola as integrator.

“The city of Dunnellon is excited about the reality of broadband develop-ment’s providing unlimited potential opportunities for both residents and en-terprises,” says F. C. Stark, vice mayor of Dunnellon. “The economic growth im-plied by this deployment is significant, and we’re looking forward to seeing im-mediate benefits when the FTTx equip-ment installation is complete.”

Reedsburg Utility Commission, a municipal fiber deployer in Wisconsin, received a broadband stimulus grant to extend its services beyond Reedsburg to an estimated 6,000 rural residents who currently have limited dial-up Internet

access. The commission recently an-nounced it would use the Calix E7 plat-form for this project. The Ethernet plat-form will enable a 10GE ring, provide GE aggregation, and deliver symmetri-cal Internet access, digital TV and voice services over GPON. The 700GE family of ONTs will be deployed at an esti-mated 2,400 homes and 310 businesses, enabling deployment flexibility between GPON and active Ethernet services as well as advanced business services.

Dave Mickonowicz, general man-ager, says, “Until the broadband stimu-lus program was announced, there were rural areas of our community that we just couldn’t afford to reach, creating a digital divide in our own backyard. With this award, and advanced tech-nology from longtime partner Calix, these rural areas adjacent to our existing fiber access serving areas will leapfrog from limited dial-up Internet access to a network capable of delivering up to 1 Gbps to every home or business and in so doing open a world of broadband op-portunity to thousands of residents and hundreds of businesses.”

Cedar Falls Utilities, an early mu-nicipal telecom provider that deployed fiber to businesses and coaxial cable to residences in the 1990s, is now deploy-ing fiber citywide using PON technol-ogy. Construction began in August and is expected to be completed at the end of 2012. Clearfield is assisting in the project with its fiber management prod-uct line, including the FieldSmart Fiber Scalability Center 288 PON cabinets

in the field, FieldSmart Fiber Crossover Distribution System (FxDS) 288 Patch and Splice Ribbon Panels in the central office, and outside-plant-rated fiber pig-tails at the premises. More than 15,000 homes will be passed, covering approxi-mately 30 square miles.

David Schilling, communications services manager, says, “We have been using Clearfield since 2006, when we installed BPON in some greenfield ar-eas in Cedar Falls. Clearfield was the only company we could find that could provide us with a PON cabinet that was acceptable to the developers. We have been very happy with the products, ser-vice and support.”

Local press reports that the city of Staunton, Va., is partnering with ser-vice provider MGW Networks, which will use city-owned fiber to deliver broadband services to downtown busi-nesses. The city installed the fiber dur-ing a trenching project a decade ago.

Lenox Municipal Utilities, a mu-nicipal fiber utility in Iowa, will use Amino’s A530 PVR set-top boxes to support its rollout of new IPTV-based entertainment services. The A530 offers both standard- and high-definition per-formance plus a personal video record-ing function that allows pause, rewind, and a range of trickplay services.

The city of Summerside, Prince Edward Island, selected Tantalus smart-grid technology for an innovative energy-efficiency initiative. Summerside uses Tantalus technology to tie together the municipality’s fiber-to-the-meter

Fibrant Launches With 100 Mbps Service

MUNICIPaL FIBER SySTEMS

“These rural areas will leapfrog from limited dial-up Internet access to a network capable of delivering up to 1 Gbps and in so doing open a

world of broadband opportunity to thousands of residents and hundreds of businesses.”


network, wind-generated power and in-home energy storage devices. Terry Murphy, Summerside’s chief admin-istrative officer, says wind can satisfy about half the city’s power needs and even produce surplus power sometimes. “But you can’t flip a switch and turn on the wind,” he adds. The Tantalus system will integrate wind power efficiently.

Rollout of Tantalus smart meters and energy storage devices began in January 2011. The city will run fiber to each home participating in the program.

WanTed: FTTH SerViCe ProViderAfter nearly three years of construction, the 200-plus-mile fiber ring in Ontario County, N.Y., operated by Axcess On-tario, a public-benefit corporation, was

completed under budget and with no federal or state funding, thanks to a lease agreement with Ontario Telephone Co. and to consultant ECC Technologies and construction contractor Syracuse Utilities. Axcess Ontario has signed master agreements with eight compa-nies, including Verizon Wireless and tw telecom, to provide broadband access to businesses and municipalities, and it is trying to lure an FTTH service provider to Ontario County.

“The concept of fiber to the home is the ultimate game changer,” says Ed Hemminger, CEO of Axcess Ontario. “Once residents have fiber to the home, everything changes. Someone who wants to work from home or start a home-based business can do so with ease. ...

Imagine conducting videoconferences on your iPad with business partners halfway across the world, all from your living room or your back deck.”

Goshen Fiber Network, owned by a public-private partnership in Goshen, Ind., completed its first phase, connect-ing all community schools and 13 city office buildings with fiber. The second phase, which will make fiber-based ser-vices available to businesses and other institutions, is now under way. New Paris Telephone, a local independent telco, made some of its fiber assets avail-able for the project and provides all maintenance and operating manage-ment under a 25-year contract. The net-work will offer open access to multiple data providers.

Start-up service provider NWT Enter-prises plans to deliver gigabit fiber to homes and businesses across the United States, using a wavelength division mul-tiplexing – passive optical networking (WDM-PON) solution from LG-Eric-sson. Based in Cumberland, Md., and

originally formed to address Internet availability problems in western Mary-land, NWT Enterprises will serve both residential and business markets. With nine areas in deployment, the company says it “will be able to bring the high Internet speeds users have been asking

for.” NWT Enterprises will provide disaster recovery, off-site data backup, hosted applications and business con-tinuity options for businesses and ad-vanced Ethernet services for triple- or multiplay residential customers.

The LG-Ericsson Ethernet Access 1100 solution uses a single fiber connec-tion to the home or office to provide us-ers with access to applications and sym-metrical services at speeds of 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps. The solution allows high- performance, triple-play applications over a single connection to the home and also creates new revenue opportunities based on future high-bandwidth applications. Telamon Corporation, a strategic partner in this next-generation access deploy-ment, is the North America distributor of LG-Ericsson’s WDM-PON platform.

GooGle delayS FiBer For CommuniTieS, dePloyS BeTa ProjeCT Although Google pushed its selection of a fiber community to 2011, it’s preparing for the main event with a beta project in Stanford University – the alma mater of founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. This trial network in the university’s

First Major WDM-PON Deployment in the U.S.

OThER DEPLOyERS

VENDOR SPOTLiGHTADC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.adc.comAlcatel-Lucent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.alcatel-lucent.comAmino . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .www.aminocom.comCalix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.calix.comClearfield . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.clearfieldconnection.comDIRECTV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .www.directv.comECC Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.ecctec.comEnablence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.enablence.comFilmOn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.filmon.comHunTel Engineering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.htleng.comLG-Ericsson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.lgericsson.comMicrosoft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.microsoft.comMotorola . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.motorola.comOccam Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .www.occamnetworks.comPulse Broadband . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.pulsebroadband.netSyracuse Utilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .www.syracuseutilities.comTantalus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .www.tantalus.comTelamon Corporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.telamon.comUniTek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.unitekgs.comZhone Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.zhone.com


residential subdivision, a group of about 850 faculty- and staff-owned homes on campus, will offer Internet speeds up to 1 Gbps. Groundbreaking starts in early 2011, and service provider Sonic.net was selected to operate and support the net-work. Sonic.net has plans to build its own fiber-to-the-home network in Se-bastopol, Calif.

According to Google, this trial is separate from the community selection process for Google Fiber but should yield information relevant to the community-wide project. The selection of Stanford, Google says, was based on the universi-ty’s openness to Google’s experimenting with new fiber technologies on its streets. The layout of the residential neighbor-hoods and small number of homes make it a good fit for a beta deployment. Best of all, its location just a few miles up the road from Google will let the company’s engineers monitor progress easily.

Two electric cooperatives, United Electric Cooperative in Maryville, Mo., and Arrowhead Electric Co-

operative in Lutsen, Minn., have an-nounced that they will partner with Pulse Broadband to build broadband-stimulus-funded FTTH networks. The two projects will span more than 2,000 miles and have the potential to serve more than 8,000 cooperative member households with advanced broadband services delivered by Pulse’s proprietary fiber architecture.

Connexion Technologies an-nounced that it has now rolled out the DIRECTV IPAdvantage system in 100 multifamily properties, making

it the most prolific installer of the IP- delivered solution. IPAdvantage supports DIRECTV, HD, broadband and voice services in multifamily environments.

Business provider L2 Networks re-ceived a cable TV franchise from the city of Albany, Ga., and is currently working to extend its fiber optic service to resi-dences in Albany as well. The company said in a letter to the city, “We believe our service, whch is fiber-optic based, will rival and perhaps exceed Google’s yet-to-be-deployed experimental ‘Think Big with a Gig’ fiber optic network.”

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A fortunate 850 households – all Stanford University faculty and staff – will beta-test

Google’s 1 Gbps fiber-to-the-home network. The university’s willingness to experiment and its

proximity to Google led to the selection.


DEPLOyER SPOTLiGHTStates with deployments referenced in this article

Alaska

norTH ameriCan TelCoS (see sidebar on RUS loan

awards for additional deployers)

Baldwin Telecom Inc. www.baldwin-telecom.netBell Aliant www.bellaliant.caBenton Ridge Telephone www.brtelco.comCass Communications www.casscomm.comCincinnati Bell www.cincinnatibell.comC-M-L Telephone Cooperative www.netins.net/

ricwebtelco/cml.htmEn-Touch Systems www.entouch.netFarmers Mutual

Telephone Company www.farmerstel.netFederated Telephone Cooperative www.fedtel.netFTTH Communications www.ftthcom.comGranby Telephone Company www.gtcbroadband.netGVTC www.gvtc.comHalstad Telephone Company www.halstadtel.comHancock Telecom www.mcclink.com/Mountain Rural

Telephone Cooperative Corp. www.mrtc.comNew Windsor Telephone www.nwtelephone.comPalmetto Rural

Telephone Cooperative www.prtc.coopReynolds Telephone www.reytel.netSouth Slope Cooperative

Communications Co. www.southslope.comSouthwest Telephone

Exchange www.interstatecom.com

Verizon Communications www.verizon.comWest Carolina Tel www.wctelephone.comWikstrom Telephone Company www.wiktel.comWoodhull Telephone Company www.woodhulltel.comXFONE www.xfone.com

oTHer norTH ameriCan dePloyerSArrowhead Electric Cooperative www.aecimn.comAxcess Ontario www.axcessontario.comCedar Falls Utilities www.cfu.netConnexion

Technologies www.connexiontechnologies.netCox Business www.coxbusiness.comFibrant Communications www.fibrant.comGoogle www.google.comGoshen Fiber Network www.goshenfiber.comGreenlight

Communications www.mygreenlightfl.comL2 Networks www.myl2n.comLenox Municipal Utilities www.lenoxutilities.comNWT Enterprises www.nwt-enterprises.comReedsburg Utility

Commission www.reedsburgutility.comStaunton, Va. (city) www.staunton.va.usSummerside, Prince Edward

Island (city) www.city.summerside.pe.caUnited Electric Cooperative www.ueci.orgWestman Communications

Group www.westmancom.com

Documents

Experimenting With Fiber - Broadband Properties