Michigan's D&P Communications launches fiber outside its traditional footprint

D&P Communications, a phone company with more than 10,000 customers that serves part of southeastern Michigan, will start building a fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) network that will pass 70 percent of the homes in Adrian, Mich., and will pass nearly all homes in Clinton, Mich. Service to these customers is expected to launch before year-end.

Small phone companies such as D&P Communications generally deploy FTTP to better serve clients within their footprint and as a means of getting existing customers to order more services. However, D&P is launching these services outside of its traditional telco operating area and the telco views FTTP as a way to grow and expand, while leveraging its fixed assets, such as its regional fiber network, its switch and its headend.

The towns of Clinton and Adrian are outside of D&P's original telco service area, as are most of the towns served by D&P. D&P also deployed FTTP to Tecumseh, Mich., another small market, in 2009. The telco already has fiber to 35 percent of the addresses in Adrian and is doubling its FTTP footprint in the market.

D&P completes with Comcast and Frontier in its markets. In launching FTTP, D&P sometimes creates a third broadband choice for customers.

D&P deploys its fiber underground and uses power back-up at huts to ensure continuous operation of the network. Optical network terminals are installed inside the customer's house. Further, to provide redundancy in the event of a fiber cut, D&P has deployed its regional fiber in a ring architecture.

For residential customers, D&P generally uses gigabit passive optical networking, or GPON, in which customers share bandwidth and expenses are reduced via use of passive network elements in the field. For medium and large business customers, active Ethernet is generally used, providing dedicated bandwidth.

D&P was founded in 1898 as Deerfield Farmers Telephone Company. During the 1990s, the telco started selling video and Internet services and was renamed D&P Communications. Also during the 1990s, the telco began building a fiber network across much of Lenawee County and parts of Monroe County in the Wolverine State.

For more:
- see this release

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