Dark Fiber

Broadband Stimulus award winners South Central Telephone Association (SC Telcom) and Madison Telephone, LLC (Madison Telephone) have selected the Calix (News - Alert) Unified Access portfolio to address their respective “ Fiber Forward” initiatives.

Each initiative will leverage advanced Calix fiber access technologies to deliver a superior broadband services experience to underdeveloped parts of their respective access networks. The three separate initiatives awarded to the two companies will together result in over $13.9 million invested in implementing advanced broadband services in southern Kansas.

Steve Davis, general manager of SC Telcom and a member of the Kansas Broadband Advisory Task Force said that access to broadband services is essential to the sustainability of communities across Kansas and furthering their economic development.

“ We felt that in the communities that we serve, it is imperative that the infrastructure that we choose to deploy be as ‘future-proof’ as possible. Our subscribers can range from the typical American small town family to the rancher running live auctions over the Internet, and with Calix fiber access solutions we know that we can deliver the broadband experience and competitive edge that our subscribers deserve. We expect these initiatives to be powerfully transformative to the communities that we are targeting,” Davis added.

The rural subscribers included in these three initiatives across southern Kansas will be served via a combination of fiber access technologies, including gigabit passive optical network (GPON), Active Ethernet (AE), and ten gigabit Ethernet (10GE) transport technologies, capable of delivering broadband speeds to the residence or business of up to one gigabit per second (Gbps).

Mary Meyer, CEO of Madison Telephone said: “ Moving ‘Fiber Forward’ was clearly the right direction to meet the needs of our community, but we faced the challenge of addressing a service area with a varied topology, an uneven dispersion of subscribers, and an overall population density across the service area of less than three subscribers per square mile. Calix provided us with a fiber solutions portfolio that enabled us to leverage a variety of fiber technologies - matching the right technology to each deployment scenario - yet manage it as one network. It’s the right network for us, and the right network for our community.”

With this announcement, aggregate Calix vendor selections by Broadband Stimulus award winners for “ last mile” Broadband Initiative Program award has now reached twelve different projects representing $114 million in Stimulus-related grants, loans, and private investment for plant engineering, materials, labor, and other costs, including access equipment.

Among its booming list of clients, Wyoming-based communications service provider Silver Star Communications has deployed the Calix Unified Access Infrastructure across its network.