Dark Fiber

Horizon Telcom, a broadband provider of advanced data services in southern and eastern Ohio, announced that as part of the Connecting Appalachia federally-funded stimulus project awarded to it, the company is building one of the nation’s most advanced broadband communications networks in southern and eastern Ohio.

Horizon has selected Fujitsu Network Communications (News - Alert), a provider of business, information technology and communications solutions, along with Fujitsu’s partners Juniper Networks and Calix (News - Alert) in fulfilling this mission.

Connecting Appalachia (CA) is a partnership between the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA, an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce) and Horizon Telcom. The new network is being built through 34 counties and runs for over 1,960 miles.

Horizon Telcom asserted that the company is proud that its vision for bringing the latest technology in fiber broadband deployment to Appalachian Ohio will be made possible through the partnership with Fujitsu, Calix and Juniper. The choice was very clear based on their industry leading collaboration and the joint delivery of best-of-breed network products which will enable a network architecture servicing Horizon customers with premier levels of broadband service well into the future.

Horizon will make use of an end-to-end solution formulated by the Fujitsu – Juniper – Calix consortium to cater to the demands of subscribers and also to build the foundation to scale and evolve in the future. Juniper’s MX Series 3D Universal Edge Routers will be deployed to increase total network capacity, reduce operational costs and quicken the delivery of advanced broadband services, and these solutions will also enable Horizon to support intelligent edge services. The Calix 700GX/GE family of ONTs will be used to provide ultra high-speed Internet services of up to a full gigabit per second to subscribers of this world class network.

Officials with Fujitsu commented that Horizon is leveraging their multi-vendor network integration expertise and network operations center capabilities along with their optical networking technology. Juniper Networks (News - Alert) and Calix bring their own market-leading technology to the project, resulting in a best-in-class multi-layer communications infrastructure for the citizens and businesses of southern and eastern Ohio.