Comporium to extend 1 Gig service to 125 South Carolina communities

Comporium, a regional telco and cable operator, is going to extend its Zipstream 1 Gbps fiber to the premises (FTTP) service to 125 neighborhoods in South Carolina's York and Lancaster counties. Service will be sold to residents for $99 per month. 

Building on the initial momentum it gained with its Rock Hill, S.C., deployment, Comporium will focus on converting existing neighborhoods to fiber in nine neighborhoods: Kimbrell Crossing, Reid Pointe, Rosemont, Bridgemill, Hanover Crossing, Trinity Ridge, Lakebridge, Avery Lakes and Dominion Bridge.

Comporium said that the upgrade project will continue through the end of 2015 as it orders and installs the necessary equipment to support the service at each customer premises.

Matthew Dosch, executive vice president of customer operations and external affairs for Comporium, said in a release that neighborhoods will be activated "based on their 'ring,' which must support 10 gigabits per second transport and have the appropriate type of electronics."

The expansion plan follows the initial launch of Zipstream to business customers in downtown Rock Hill in June, with subsequent plans to offer the service to new businesses and residential customers of the Bleachery area, known as Knowledge Park, as it is developed.

Its decision to target businesses in downtown Rock Hill was to drive more economic development.  

"We wanted new jobs coming in that are going to attract new growth that we haven't had," said Mike Deller, vice president of engineering and planning, in an interview with FierceTelecom. "We felt that in order to help with [job growth], one of the things we could do as a communications provider was provide a strong fiber backbone and gigabit services."

Last week, the service provider announced it would extend Zipstream to five Rock Hill business parks.

Building out the 1 Gbps service should not be that much of a surprise. While it was moving with its installation in Rock Hill, S.C., Dosch said that its "engineering team was assessing the network we already established in numerous residential areas" over the past 10-plus years.

The service provider has been building out FTTP networks in parts of its serving territory with previous generation PON equipment. It is using ADTRAN's FTTP GPON equipment for these new network builds and the previous builds.

For more:
- see the release

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