Opelika, Ala. is giving its residents a new quad play offering over a new Fiber to the Home (FTTH) network that will not only offer traditional triple play voice, video and data service, but also a means to monitor their energy usage.
From a telecom service perspective, the city's power company Opelika Power Services will provide high speed data services over fiber-based connections to the customer in addition to IPTV service.
Serving as a dual purpose network, the FTTH network being built by the power company will also extend the use of its 'smart grid' network, supporting new power sensors and smart meters across the city.
The FTTH network will enable the power company to monitor and measure performance of the power grid, enabling them to manage the flow of electricity and quickly resolve problems, reduce outage repair time, which will minimize the impact to its customers. By using remote sensors and smart meters, Opelika Power said it will be able to save operational costs by "enabling employees to work more efficiently and helping to minimize the risk of human error."
Likewise, residential customers will be able to self-monitor their household's energy usage with advanced meter reading devices.
To make this network a reality, it is deploying Alcatel-Lucent's (NYSE: ALU) GPON Optical Network Terminals (ONT) at each residence to deliver the telecom and energy usage services, while the 7750 Ethernet Service Switch will provide service aggregation, bandwidth management and subscriber control. In addition, Alcatel-Lucent will be the integrator of the City of Opelika's IPTV service, which runs on the Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Mediaroom solution.
Opelika is one of many municipally-based energy companies that have decided to target their existing customers with their own set of telecom services that most incumbent carriers have refused or can't provide today.
For more:
- see the release
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