Three utility companies are accelerating their fiber deployments and using Adtran gear to make it happen. Thanks to federal government funding programs like the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, many non-traditional broadband providers such as electric cooperatives and municipalities are deploying Adtran’s Total Access 5000 platform to deliver fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) for their business and residential customers. Others are using the platform to expand their network with XGS-PON technology. XGS-PON is a passive optical network standard that can support 10-Gig upstream and downstream data.
The City of Monroe, Georgia, is one Adtran customer that is planning to use the company’s TA-5000 fiber platform to expand its fiber footprint. The City of Monroe is a municipal utility that provides customers with electric, cable TV, broadband, VOIP and natural gas, water and wastewater services. The utility already delivers fiber to its downtown businesses, schools and the area’s hospital system. However, now it will expand that fiber footprint to reach any customer in any location within the city limits. Using the TA-5000, the utility can scale down for less concentrated fiber deployments, such as those in less densely populated areas of the city. In addition, Monroe will use the TA-5000 so it can incorporate XGS-PON services and upgrade to multi-gigabit speeds as needed.
But the City of Monroe isn’t alone. OzarksGo, which is a subsidiary of Ozarks Electric Cooperative, provides TV and telephone services in Northeast Oklahoma and Northwest Arkansas. The company is leveraging RDOF funding to deliver broadband to underserved areas and is adding 800 new subscribers per month.
Besides growing its fiber footprint, many of OzarksGo customers need more capacity to handle new industrial IoT applications and automation. By using Adtran’s TA-5000 platform with Combo PON technology and Mosaic customer experience software, OzarksGo can deploy XGS-PON and provide extra capacity. “We needed a solution to maintain our quality of service while increasing capacity throughout our fiber network while improving our Wi-Fi service and subscribers’ experience in the home,” said Steve Bandy, general manager of OzarksGo.
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A third utility, Consolidated Cooperative, is part of the National Information Solutions Cooperative (NISC), and is using Adtran’s TA-5000 platform to expand its fiber network. Adtran’s platform can be integrated with NISC’s software, making it easy to deploy and provision the network as well as handle customer service, billing and finance.
Consolidated first started deploying fiber in 2010 to connect electric facilities and data centers. It expanded that fiber deployment to include residences in 2017 but ran into supply chain issues with its former vendor. Consolidated now plans to use Adtran’s gear to double the number of homes passed in its network by the end of this year.
The company is deploying gigabit-ready fiber but plans to pivot to multi-gigabit services using XGS-PON as bandwidth demand increases.