Shentel gets into the 100G network game

Shentel (Nasdaq: SHEN), a regional rural telco serving Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and surrounding areas, has updated its existing DWDM network to support 100G speeds for customers that reside in Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland.

Like other telcos, Shentel took a "leverage and extend" approach to 100G by upgrading its existing DWDM ONS 15454 MSTP gear from Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) to support the 100G speeds. It has also deployed the vendor's ASR 9000 Series router to provide IP-based services.

One of the benefits of the existing Cisco optical platforms is that the Multi-Degree Reconfigurable Optical Add-Drop Multiplexer (MD-ROADM) DWDM 100G networks can be expanded further into the rest of its territory quickly without the need to purchase new network hardware. 

Driven by growing demands for higher bandwidth services from its business, residential and wholesale customers, the new optical and IP-based backbone network will serve as a backbone to support its growing suite of voice, data, video and cloud services, while enabling it to provide new 10G and 100G optical wavelength services. 

After it first deployed the ASR 9000 platform in 2010, Shentel has been upgrading its existing 7600 network to the new platform throughout its operating footprint. The ASR will serve as Shentel's network core, providing up to 96 Tbps per system.

And while the telco may be placing more emphasis on growing its cable and wireless segments, it reported that second quarter wireline fiber sales rose 7.4 percent year-over-year to $5.6 million.

In addition to providing wireless backhaul services that range from 50 Mbps and above, it sells wholesale services to a number of regional service providers.

Willy Pirtle, vice president of sales and marketing for Shentel, said in an earlier interview with FierceTelecom they were in the process of "quoting our first 100 Gig circuit."

For more:
- see the release

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