Fiber - Broadband Properties

The ultimate network 

is now the ultimate amenity. 

Residents will enjoy: Attract and retain residents with: 

• FiOS® Flex View* - View select movies and 

content anywhere on your TV, laptop, 

or compatible smartphone 

• FiOS TV - Access over 100 HD channels, 

20K Video on Demand titles and more 

• FiOS Internet - Offers download speeds up to 

150 Mbps and upload speeds up to 35 Mbps 

• Premium installation and marketing tools - Use the appeal 

of FiOS to fill your units 

• Verizon Concierge - Offering lifestyle amenity management 

including resident alerts, community web portal and more 

• Verizon Home Control - Remotely unlock doors, monitor 

cameras, manage energy use and more, all coming soon via 

the FiOS network 

Fill your units with the ultimate network! Contact a sales representative today. 

VISIT verizon.com/communities CALL 1.888.376.5472 

* Service usage and content availability restrictions apply. Flex View not currently available in Buffalo, NY. FiOS available in select areas. Actual speeds may vary. Battery back up for standard fiber-based voice, 

FiOS Digital Voice and E911 (but not other voice services) for up to 8 hours. Call for details. ©2011 Verizon. D3375-1

Puzzle Solved! 

After 30 years and 900,000 access lines, Brian Schrand has a passion for 

building fiber networks.The challenge of building a high-performance network – 

on time and within budget was a complex puzzle that didn’t seem to have 

an answer. He knew when he saw the Clearview Cassette, that it was an 

industry-changing technology that could reduce the cost of fiber deployment in 

the central office, OSPand access network. 

Andy Betscher, field operations specialist at Cincinnati 

Bell concurs, “The simplicity of the Clearview Cassette 

and its ability to be installed into different enclosures 

gives our technicians the ease and efficiency we need to 

significantly minimize labor cost.” 

Join us the firstTuesday of every month at www.FiberPuzzle.com for a live 

web-based discussion group on fiber challenges – and solutions.And to get our 

take on a fiber deployment puzzle you’re currently facing, drop Brian a note at 

brianschrand@clfd.net. 

Solving the fiber puzzle, 12-ports at a time. 

800.422.2537 www.ClearfieldConnection.com www.FiberPuzzle.com

Coming Soon: 

Broadband Properties is changing its name. 

BroadbandCommunities

Why Is BroadBand ProPertIes 

ChangIng Its name? 

A conversation with Scott DeGarmo, CEO of Broadband Properties. 

Q. Why the name-change? Will the magazine’s mission and content change too? 

A. It’s always a big step when a well-established publication changes its name. We are changing because 

we’ve expanded our coverage from our original focus – private cable service in multifamily housing – to a 

much wider one, advanced broadband and its impacts on communities of many kinds. Many of the changes 

reflected in the new name, Broadband Communities, have been introduced over the past six or seven years. 

So, while the new name in some ways marks a beginning, it also confirms changes already made. 

Q. Why didn’t you change the name earlier? 

A. Broadband Properties has been a strong brand with a positive identity. We held onto it until we felt we’d 

truly expanded beyond the scope of the name. 

Q. Why is this a good time to change your name? 

A. It’s best to change from a position of strength, and that is where we are in terms of our outstanding 

editorial product, the ongoing success of the Summit, our audience growth and our continually expanding 

online offerings, including webinars. 

Q. The property owners you serve shouldn’t have a problem with your new name. 

A. Right. They view their properties as communities, and advanced broadband is one of their major tools for 

creating a sense of community. Connectivity not only brings residents closer to the outside world but also 

helps them interact with one another. 

Q. The magazine also serves towns and cities and the municipal officials who make decisions 

about broadband. 

A. The term “community” resonates with these leaders, who see advanced broadband as a way to strengthen 

their communities economically and improve their quality of life. Economic development professionals, 

educators and broadband champions share the same view. And, by the way, it’s not just towns and cities. 

Broadband is vital to all kinds of communities, ranging from student living to retirement villages, and from 

brand-new planned-unit developments to 200-year-old farming communities. 

Q. What about telcos, cable companies, utilities and other providers? 

A. They serve communities as well – in fact, many of the smaller providers have long traditions of involvement 

with the rural communities they serve. Our coverage of the challenges and successes of deploying 

advanced broadband in various kinds of communities has relevance to all types of network builders. 

Q. “Community” also suggests strong connections between people and emotional involvement. 

Is that what you are trying to convey in a magazine about telecommunications? 

A. An example: We just received an invitation to a street party in Florida to attend the launch of a fiber-tothe-home 

network. The invitation was charged with words like “excitement” and “celebration.” While you 

could view it as just a marketing event, citizens do indeed view such launches as important milestones for 

themselves, their families and their communities. 

Q. What about your website? Will that change? 

A. We have the URL broadbandcommunities.com, so we will make that the new destination for visitors. We 

will also have an abbreviated form of that name for ease of use. 

Q. Many magazines have made the switch entirely to digital. Is that coming? 

A. We will continue to increase our total circulation – with readers of our digital editions, including a planned 

iPad edition, gradually becoming a larger portion of the mix, based on their own choice. 

ExPAndEd AUdIEnCES • nEW EdITORIAL FEATURES • AddEd COnTRIBUTORS • dIgITAL & PRInT PUBLICATIOnS 

• MORE E-nEWSLETTERS • REFURBIShEd WEBSITE • WEBInARS • InTERACTIvE dATABASES • LEAd 

gEnERATIOn • BLOgS • CUSTOM RESEARCh • TARgETEd EMAIL BLASTS • vIdEO • ChARTER Ad RATES 

• InTEgRATEd MARkETIng • PROgRAMS • vIRTUAL EvEnTS • RESEARCh • CUSTOM PUBLIShIng • AUdITEd dATA

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR 

Scott DeGarmo 

PUBLISHER 

Nancy McCain 

nancym@broadbandproperties.com 

CORPORATE EDITOR, BBP LLC 

Steven S. Ross 

steve@broadbandproperties.com 

EDITOR 

Masha Zager 

masha@broadbandproperties.com 

ADVERTISING SALES 

Irene G. Prescott 

irene@broadbandproperties.com 

MARkETING SPECIALIST 

Meredith Terrall 

meredith@broadbandproperties.com 

DESIGN & PRODUCTION 

Karry Thomas 

CONTRIBUTORS 

Joe Bousquin 

David Daugherty, Korcett Holdings Inc. 

Richard Holtz, InfiniSys 

W. James MacNaughton, Esq. 

Henry Pye, RealPage 

Bryan Rader, Bandwidth Consulting LLC 

Robert L. Vogelsang, Broadband Properties Magazine 

Broadband Properties LLC 

PRESIDENT & CEO 

Scott DeGarmo 

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT 

CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER 

Himi Kittner 

VICE PRESIDENT, 

BUSINESS & OPERATIONS 

Nancy McCain 

AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT/DIGITAL STRATEGIES 

Norman E. Dolph 

CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD 

Robert L. Vogelsang 

VICE CHAIRMAN 

The Hon. Hilda Gay Legg 

BUSINESS & EDITORIAL OFFICE 

Broadband Properties LLC 

1909 Avenue G 

Rosenberg, Tx 77471 

281.342.9655, Fax 281.342.1158 

WWW.BROADBANDPROPERTIES.COM 

Broadband Properties (ISSN 0745-8711) (USPS 679-050) 

(Publication Mail Agreement #1271091) is published 7 times 

a year at a rate of $24 per year by Broadband Properties LLC, 

1909 Avenue G, Rosenberg, TX 77471. Periodical postage 

paid at Rosenberg, TX, and additional mailing offices. 

POSTMASTER: Please send address changes to Broadband 

Properties, PO Box 303, Congers, NY 10920-9852. 

CANADA POST: Publications Mail Agreement #40612608. 

Canada Returns to be sent to Bleuchip International, PO Box 

25542, London, ON N6C 6B2. 

Copyright © 2011 Broadband Properties LLC. All rights 

reserved. 

Editor’s Note 

Everything’s 

Up to Date In 

Kansas City 

The Google fiber project in Kansas City has 

captured the nation’s attention. 

As everyone with enough interest 

in broadband to read this magazine 

already knows, Google recently 

announced the location for its first 

gigabit fiber network: Kansas City, Kan. 

That’s great news for the citizens of 

Kansas City and maybe for other cities 

whose turn will be coming soon. Although 

the newspapers of the other 1,100 

communities that submitted proposals to 

Google all ran headlines with variations 

on “Google Snubs Us,” project leader 

Milo Medin made clear that, if all goes 

well, Google intends to build similar networks 

in multiple cities. 

Strong support from the governor, 

mayor and schools chief; enthusiastic 

participation by community organizations 

that included a university medical 

center, a tech industry alliance and a 

foundation supporting entrepreneurship; 

and access to physical infrastructure that 

will make the buildout cost-efficient were 

all reasons that Google gave for selecting 

Kansas City. 

Yet dozens of other applicants had 

similar assets, so commentators have been 

working overtime speculating about the 

real deciding factor. Does Google plan 

to buy Sprint, which is headquartered 

nearby? Does it intend to contract out the 

installation to SureWest, which also operates 

in the Kansas City area? Will Kansas 

City-Wyandotte County’s unified 

government allow Google to expand the 

network with a minimum of red tape? If 

you’re attending the Broadband Properties 

Summit, you will have a chance to 

ask Megan Stull, telecom policy counsel 

4 | BROADBAND PROPERTIES | www.broadbandproperties.com | March/april 2011 

for Google, when she speaks at the Economic 

Development Program. (I can’t 

promise she will divulge the answer.) 

Our GOOGle MOMent 

More interesting than why Google selected 

Kansas City is what will happen as 

a result. From a technical standpoint, this 

project is not radically new, even for the 

U.S. The competitive provider Paxio has 

operated an open-access gigabit fiber network 

in the San Francisco Bay Area for 

several years. EPB Fiber Optics, the municipal 

provider in Chattanooga, Tenn., 

offers 1 Gbps service throughout the city. 

Case Western Reserve University has a 

gigabit fiber pilot program in a low-income 

neighborhood of Cleveland. (EPB 

and Case are represented at the Summit, 

too.) A number of other FTTH operators 

offer gigabit service to businesses. 

Google is different because – well, 

because it’s Google. People all over the 

country pay attention to what Google 

says, and in this case, it should have 

much of interest to say. By sharing publicly 

what it learns about deploying fiber, 

about making the open-access model 

work and about new high-bandwidth applications, 

the company could, in effect, 

conduct a crash course on broadband for 

the entire country. We hope that the project 

will make FTTH a household word. 

So welcome Google, welcome Kansas 

City, and welcome the gigabit era! 

Masha@broadbandproperties.com

G4S TECHNOLOGY 

For more than two decades, you’ve come to know 

Adesta for our ability to deliver innovative and effective 

communications and security solutions to clients of all 

sizes and in virtually every industry. 

Now, as G4S Technology, we’ll not only retain the 

people, the products and the relationships that have 

made our success possible – we’ll also have the added 

resources and capabilities that can only come from 

being part of the world’s leading international security 

solutions group – G4S. 

Spread the word. 

g4stechnology.com 

We’re taking on a new 

communications project – our own. 

Adesta is now G4S TECHNOLOGY. 

1200 Landmark Center | Omaha, NE 68102 | 855-G4S-USA1

DEPARTMENTS 

editor’s note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 

Advertiser Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .132 

Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .132 

IN THIS ISSUE 

Provider Perspective 

new Perspective From Old Headlines | 8 

By Bryan J. Rader ■ Bandwidth Consulting LLC 

Today’s ‘game changers’ may turn out to be next year’s also-rans. 

Owners Corner 

Bulk Services Make 

Sense for Student Housing | 10 

By Henry Pye and Chris Acker ■ RealPage Inc. 

Bulk service agreements may have lost favor in conventional housing, 

but they are still important in student housing communities. 

Metrics 

Performance Metrics: 

Beyond the noise Factor | 12 

By David Daugherty ■ Korcett Holdings Inc. 

Proactive steps that property owners can take. 

Property of the Month 

Horizon Bay at Hyde Park, tampa, Fla. | 16 

By Joe Bousquin ■ Contributing Editor, Broadband Properties 

In the first new retirement community built in Tampa in 20 years, 

fiber services help residents stay active and engaged. 

Fiber Deployment Strategies 

Allied Fiber nationwide 

network uses Bold new Approach | 20 

By Joan Engebretson ■ Telecom Writer 

Allied Fiber’s unusual design promises to bring fiber access to hundreds 

of smaller, bypassed communities around the country. 

the law 

Cable Home Wiring 

rules and Cable Competition | 40 

By Carl E. Kandutsch ■ Attorney 

MDU owners trying to foster cable competition may be able to use 

FCC rules that were devised for consumer protection purposes. 

FCC to Impose new Disability 

Access rules on Service Providers | 44 

By Robert D. Primosch ■ Wilkinson Barker Knauer LLP 

The FCC is developing new rules for making video, VoIP, messaging 

and videoconferencing services more accessible. 

Industry Analysis 

Consolidation in the 

telecommunications Industry | 46 

By Jill Kasle ■ Th e George Washington University 

A generation ago, Judge Greene broke up the telecom industry. 

Now, the pieces are reassembling in new ways. 

Table of Contents 

HoT PRoDUCTS 

CovER SToRy 


Broadband Properties’ 10th Annual 

list of leading Broadband 

technologies and Services | 26 

Learn about this year’s latest and greatest broadband products … 

and then see them at the BBP Summit. 

FIBer-tO-tHe-HOMe PrIMer: 

Advantages of Optical Access | 51 

The fifth annual edition of the Fiber-to-the-Home Primer, produced 

in association with the Fiber-to-the-Home Council, is a 

comprehensive guide to FTTH for builders, developers, municipal 

officials and service providers. 

Independent telcos 

FttH and Independent telcos | 48 

By Masha Zager ■ Broadband Properties 

More than 100 new telcos were added to the list since last year. 

Modeling the Cost Of 

rural Fiber Deployment | 106 


A new study provides the first reliable rural FTTH cost model. 

technology 

Making the Most of a Fiber network | 110 

By Irit Gillath ■ Telco Systems 

A small ILEC in Alaska offers sophisticated Carrier Ethernet services 

and mobile backhaul. Here’s how it’s done. 

Fundamental FttH 

Planning and Design: Part 2 | 114 

By David Stallworth ■ OFS 

Proper placement of fiber routes can have a great impact on cost. 

Municipal Fiber networks 

Community Fiber networks 

Succeed through Marketing | 118 

By Craig Settles ■ Communities United for Broadband 

Marketing involves learning what customers expect – and meeting 

those expectations. 

Worst Practices in Community Broadband | 122 

By Andrew Michael Cohill, Ph.D. ■ Design Nine Inc. 

Ten mistakes community broadband networks make (and how to 

avoid them). 

Building a nationwide 

Open-Access network | 126 

By Ronald Corriveau ■ COS Systems 

By automating service management, a Swedish network operator costeffectively 

manages the networks of more than 40 municipalities. 

Broadband Apps 

the low-latency Service Opportunity | 128 

By Brian Quigley ■ ADVA Optical Networking 

How low can you go? Financial trading firms are willing to pay a 

premium for low-latency services. Other industries will follow them.

We’ll give your residents 

what they want —even before 

they know they want it. 

Technology is magical. The excitement it creates turns us all into kids again. 

If it also makes life easier, we put it to work. A good example is Time Warner 

Cable 4G Mobile Internet. Customers didn’t know they wanted the speed and 

freedom of Internet on the go. Now, they can’t live without it. You expect 

nothing less. Time Warner Cable delivers. 

To learn more about partnering with Time Warner Cable, simply contact 

Joanne C. Luger at 703.345.2749 or email joanne.luger@twcable.com 

© 2011 Time Warner Cable Inc. All rights reserved, Time Warner Cable and the eye/ear logo are trademarks of 

Time Warner Inc., used under license.

Provider Perspective 

New Perspective 

From Old Headlines 

Video streaming is heralded as the death knell for the cable industry. Now, 

where have we heard that before? 

By Bryan Rader ■ Bandwidth Consulting LLC 

Sometimes looking back at history 

helps us gain perspective on 

today’s trends. For example, consider 

January 10, 2000. 

The business headlines that day all 

concerned a merger that created a “digital 

media powerhouse.” The press was 

celebrating a new force in the media and 

cable industries. A new player was in 

town. The cable guys should be shaking 

in their boots. What had happened? 

America Online had bought Time 

Warner for $182 billion in stock and 

debt. The deal “combined the nation’s 

top Internet service provider with the 

world’s top media conglomerate” and 

“redefines what the next generation of 

digital-based leaders will look like,” the 

newspapers asserted. 

Many said the alliance was unbeatable. 

People called it a game changer 

and a winner and said the merged entity 

would be an all-star platform that would 

impact music, publishing, news, entertainment 

and cable. 

However, the AOL offering never 

justified these expectations. Yes, a cosmic 

shift seemed to be occurring. Suddenly, 

almost 30 million users were 

paying $19.95 each for dial-up AOL 

Internet connections. AOL was new. It 

was fresh. It was a great way to send and 

receive content. But a game changer? 

Not quite. Consumer behavior was 

changing and content consumption was 

moving online, but none of that radically 

impacted the cable business. 

So many smart people got it wrong. 

Ted Turner supported the merger. Dick 

Parsons approved it. Gerald Levin com- 

mitted to it. And Steve Case – well, he 

was too busy counting the beans he 

earned from the deal to worry about it. 

Within 10 years, AOL became a 

sleepy collection of websites, and its 30 

million subscribers signed up for broadband 

from Comcast, AT&T or FiOS. 

IS tHIS AnOtHer AOl MOMent? 

Which of today’s headlines will be interesting 

to revisit in a decade? How about 

“Netflix Tops 20 Million Subscribers” 

or “Why Netflix Will Beat Cable in the 

21st Century”? 

Yes, there is incredible enthusiasm 

for streaming movies to computers and 

iPads – enough to make Amazon, Red- 

Box, Roku, Apple and others jump into 

this business. But although these third 

parties may have created the category 

and have surely captured consumers’ interest, 

cable companies are still clearly in 

the driver’s seat. 

Cable operators own the pipe to the 

consumer. We can offer movie streaming 

as part of a cable subscription and 

provide real quality of service as well as 

content on demand. Netflix and Amazon 

just offer collections of content running 

on someone else’s network. In fact, the 

new entrants are slowly commoditizing 

their own movie-streaming businesses. 


Ten years ago, people thought AOL 

would redefine the cable business. Experts 

said AOL would buy AT&T Broadband 

and become the leading provider of 

cable services in the United States. Yes, 

AOL was first in the online world and developed 

a very attractive product, just as 

Netflix has. But it wasn’t sustainable, and 

it certainly wasn’t a game changer. 

The same is true today for Netflix. 

It’s a great concept, and it’s very cheap. 

However, it has not led to the cord-cutting 

that many predicted last year, and it 

has not even led to declining cable bills. 

In fact, Cablevision recently surpassed 

$150 a month average revenue per customer. 

Wow! 

Netflix, like AOL before it, is an incremental 

service. There is room on the 

shelf for this product and others like it. 

But as cable operators catch up by increasing 

their on-demand video libraries, 

headlines will change once again. 

Rereading old AOL headlines can 

help us put the Netflix effect into perspective 

and share this insight with our 

clients. Strong operators see the video- 

streaming trend as an opportunity 

rather than an event that shifts power to 

the new players. 

I can’t wait to read those headlines in 

10 years. BBP 

About the Author 

Bryan Rader is CEO of Bandwidth Consulting LLC, which he founded in 2007 to 

assist providers with their performance in the multifamily market. Prior to starting 

Bandwidth Consulting, he founded and ran private cable operator MediaWorks for 

10 years. You can reach Bryan at bryanjrader@yahoo.com or at 636-536-0011. 

Learn more at www.bandwidthconsultingllc.com.

ig value in a 

mini bundle 

Mini-Rocker© 

Channell’s Single Supplier Solution can save you a bundle by 

reducing product inventory and providing fast, tool-less installations 

with environmentally sealed connectors for voice and data. 

America 800.423.1863 • Canada 905.565.1700 • Europe, Middle East, Africa 44.1689.871522 • 

www.channell.com 

Baseboard Jack 

mini rocker biscuit ad 2011.indd 1 3/15/2011 12:28:00 PM

Owners Corner 

Bulk Services Make Sense 

For Student Housing 

Bulk services are often criticized, but there are good reasons to continue 

offering them in student living communities. 

By Henry Pye and Chris Acker ■ RealPage Inc. 

nearly every purpose-built student 

living development today 

provides bulk video and Internet 

services. Although bulk services may be 

debatable for conventional multifamily 

housing communities, including bulk 

video and Internet services in a student 

resident’s rent has been and continues to 

be a good idea. 

Every student housing community 

fills up with new residents over a one- to 

two-day period at the beginning of the 

fall term. Initiating service in such a short 

time for so many residents would be logistically 

difficult without using bulk services. 

Most retail services are designed to 

accommodate single-family homes and 

work well enough in conventional multifamily 

communities. In student housing, 

in the absence of bulk services, the sheer 

number of move-ins over a short period 

would cause residents to have to wait at 

least a week to get their services up and 

running. The fact that many residents 

never meet their suite mates until movein 

day would further delay coordination 

and ordering of services. 

Waiting a week or more for services 

would be disastrous in student housing. 

Broadband might as well be water 

for students. It’s not just about entertainment 

– students have real academic 

needs for broadband when classes, which 

now almost always have online components, 

begin shortly after move-in. 

Leasing teams in student communities 

face a bizarre incongruity: Even 

though their prospective lessees are 

the greatest users of video and Internet 

services, they have had no experience 

purchasing these services either at home 

or in on-campus housing. Moreover, 

competing leasing teams are teaching 

students the cost savings and efficacy of 

including video and HSIA in the rent. 

AvOIDInG equIPMent DePOSItS 

Because most students have slim credit 

histories, they often incur significant 

deposits for equipment. Digital cable 

TV, fiber to the premises, IPTV and 

other advances provide wonderful new 

services, but they exponentially increase 

the cost of the customer-premises equipment 

(CPE) required. Students without 

bulk services could once obtain video 

and Internet services with little effort, 

no equipment and very low deposits, if 

any; now, many face hundreds of dollars 

in deposits and highly involved installations. 

Although parents and others can 

cosign leases, cosigning service agreements 

is next to impossible. Creditworthiness 

and deposits have historically 

suppressed demand for upgraded video 

and Internet services. Notably, as student 

living communities began to include the 

requisite CPE in bulk services, upgrades 

increased significantly. 

Bulk services also offer value to student 

living communities. Well-negotiated 

bulk services can cost as little as 25 percent 

of equivalent retail services (though 

calculations are difficult because there 

are often no retail analogies for student 


bulk Internet packages). Offering retail 

services also risks angering residents or 

their parents, many of whom already feel 

nickel-and-dimed by the time they complete 

move-in. Requiring a service contract 

for basic video and Internet services 

that other student housing communities 

include in the rent will ensure that some 

residents and parents feel cheated. In addition, 

parents prefer lumping as many 

costs as possible into one rent check. 

Finally, management can use bulk 

Internet services to communicate with 

residents and enforce timely rent payments. 

Most bulk multifamily solutions 

now include messaging systems. Some 

are simple captive portals that force 

residents to a community Web page 

at login; more advanced systems allow 

communities to send messages of differing 

levels of urgency to individuals 

or groups of residents and get acknowledgements 

of receipt. 

Many providers now allow management 

to slow down Internet speeds of 

residents who are late paying their rent. 

Finally, various community systems and 

services, ranging from access control 

cameras to iPads used for leasing, can 

piggyback onto bulk Internet services. 

Though the strategy is often misunderstood 

and criticized, offering bulk 

video and Internet services for student 

living communities still makes sense for 

many reasons. BBP 

About the Authors 

Henry Pye is vice president of Velocity Advisory Services for RealPage (www.realpage. 

com). He can be reached at henry.pye@realpage.com. Chris Acker is director, Velocity 

Advisory Services for RealPage and can be reached at chris.acker@realpage.com.

5000 Series Product Line • Analog Digital Direct to QAM Local Insertion 

QRf5000 

• Economic insertion of analogue video 

feeds on existing digital cable plant to 

view with digital converter box. 

• Moves your System towards an all 

digital solution. 

• Flexible channel selection capability. 

• 64 QAM & 256 QAM Selectable Output. 

QRf5000-w 

• Wall mountable 16” o.c. mounting holes. 

• Ruggerized, lockable, wall mountable 

enclosure. 

• Accepts Internal Notch Filter and 

Cable Modem. 

• Input & Output test ports via internal 

directional couplers. 

QRf5000-M 

• High RF Output, +62dBmV. 

• Low Power consumption. 

• All Settings can be managed with an 

easy to use GUI. 

• Available in 1 or 2 Channel versions. 

• Optional QAM Inserter with 

Integrated Tuner. 

Creating Cost Effective Solutions 

with Cutting Edge Technology 

Radiant Communications Corp • 5001 Hadley Road • South Plainfield, NJ 07080 

908-757-7444 • sales@rccfiber.com • www.rccfiber.com

Performance Metrics: 

Beyond the Noise Factor 

How a network is designed and provisioned affects an Internet provider’s 

ability to deliver satisfactory services. 

By David Daugherty ■ Korcett Holdings Inc. 

With the growing reliance on 

Internet access, good Internet 

service is far more than 

an amenity – it’s a necessity. Conversely, 

poor Internet service isn’t an annoyance; 

it’s a deal breaker. In the age of social 

networking, irritated residents don’t 

take long to make themselves heard. A 

single resident, using social sites such as 

Facebook and Twitter, can have a significant 

impact on occupancy rates. 

cussion provides some insight into these 

topics and their relationship to Internet 

performance. Ultimately, the industry 

needs a metrics-based vernacular that 

will facilitate the assessment of how well 

Internet service providers are performing 

in real time. 

Internet uPtIMe 

Internet uptime is the percentage of 

time that Internet services are available 

Waiting for residents to make noise is a dangerous 

method of measuring service quality; by the time an 

accurate measurement is available, residents may 

have moved out. Measuring uptime, bandwidth, 

oversubscription ratio and infrastructure quality 

allows owners to be more proactive. 

In the last Metrics column, we 

talked about resident noise as a first- 

order measure of Internet service quality. 

However, waiting for residents to 

make noise is a dangerous method of 

measuring service quality; by the time 

an accurate measurement is available, 

residents may have moved out. 

Measuring uptime, bandwidth, 

oversubscription ratio and infrastructure 

quality, which are typically specified 

in service agreements, offers a 

better chance of catching – and fixing – 

Internet service problems before they 

drive residents away. The following dis- 

to residents, excluding regularly scheduled 

maintenance outages. For example, 

a “four nines” service level means that 

services are available 99.99 percent of 

the time, or 525,895 of the 525,948 

minutes in a year. 

Internet uptime provisions in service 

agreements have their origins in com- 


David Daugherty is the founder and CEO of Korcett Holdings. He can be reached 

at david@korcett.com. Korcett Holdings is dedicated to the development and deployment 

of next-generation managed service solutions. 


mercial services. For some larger corporations, 

minutes of downtime can equate to 

millions of dollars in lost revenue. In that 

case, a definitive value can be assigned to 

every minute of Internet downtime. 

For residential services, however, the 

costs of downtime are not as clear. At 

what point, for example, does a multipledwelling 

unit (MDU) asset manager 

begin to see degraded financial performance 

due to poor Internet services? 

Residential services do not typically exceed 

three nines (99.9 percent uptime), 

much less four nines, and are almost always 

provided on a best-effort basis. 

Best-effort basis is an alternative to the 

complex quality of service (QoS) control 

mechanisms typically provided in commercial 

networks. High-quality communications 

services can be provided over a 

best-effort network by overprovisioning 

bandwidth so that it is sufficient for the 

expected peak traffic load. The resulting 

absence of network congestion eliminates 

the need for QoS mechanisms. 

BAnDWIDtH PrOvISIOnInG 

To deliver 2 Mbps x 2 Mbps services to 

100 residents, a provider could simply 

multiply the number of residents by the 

size of the pipe (100 x 2 = 200 Mbps). 

Provisioning 200 Mbps of bandwidth 

would be a very expensive solution, 

however.

How is it possible to deliver 2 Mbps 

x 2 Mbps service to 100 residents with 

anything less than a 200 Mbps pipe? It’s 

simple: Oversubscribe a smaller pipe. 

Oversubscription is how ISPs have sold 

bandwidth since the Internet was born. 

It is possible because most Internet data 

traffic typically occurs in short bursts. 

Serving a large group of users with a 

small pipe works because the total cumulative 

bandwidth required at any 

time is a small fraction of the cumulative 

bandwidth that would be required if all 

users generated constant-bit-rate traffic. 

Figure 1 illustrates the bandwidth 

required to deliver bulk Internet services 

using oversubscription. For example, the 

bandwidth required to deliver 5 Mbps 

x 5 Mbps service to each resident is 16 

Mbps for every 100 residents. As the 

demand for constant-bit-rate services increases, 

so will the bandwidth required 

to provide bulk Internet services. 

In a bulk service arrangement (a 

wholesale purchase agreement in which 

the owner agrees to buy services for 

The Service Provider Challenge: 

PrOPerty BAnDWIDtH reCOMMenDAtIOnS Per 100 reSIDentS 

Property Cap With 

Upselling (Mbps) 

Deliver advanved Internet services to: 

23 000 subscribers, 

9 cities nation wide in a competitive network 

Riksnet delivers industry leading internet 

services with prices among the lowest on Earth*. 

Come and see what COS can do for your network! 

Broadband Summit 2011 APRIL 26-28 

Hotel Intercontinental Dallas,Texas - Booth 611 

Contractual Cap 

(Mbps) 

every unit, occupied or not), the contractual 

cap is the bandwidth needed 

to deliver services to each resident. The 

property cap is the bandwidth actually 

deployed to the property, which may be 

sufficient to allow residents to purchase 

Resident Base Rate (Mbps 

downstream and upstream) 

Residents/ 

Beds 

10 5 1 x 1 100 

12 6.25 2 x 2 100 

14 7 3 x 3 100 

15 7.5 4 x 4 100 

16 8 5 x 5 100 

17 8.5 6 x 6 100 

18 9 7 x 7 100 

19 9.5 8 x 8 100 

20 10 9 x 9 100 

21 10.5 10 x 10 100 

Figure 1: Oversubscription allows providers to share bandwidth among customers. 

Success story NO.9 

* Study by: Point Topic / Broadband Tariff Benchmarks -Q3 2010 

bandwidth upgrades through Internetbased 

service management portals. 

OverSuBSCrIPtIOn rAtIO 

In an MDU environment where residents 

share bandwidth, oversubscrip- 

Automate Your Network 

“ COS is Simple and Easy to use, It completely 

automates the entire process for adding 

and provisioning a new customer. I need Fewer 

Personnel to support and manage our customers 

on COS managed networks and we have fewer headaches 

too, because COS just takes care of it all “ 

Å k e N i l s s o n , 

H e a d o f C u s t o m e r S e r v i c e 

R i k s n e t A B , S W E D E N 

w w w. c o s s y s t e m s . c o m 

s a l e s @ c o s s y s t e m s . c o m 

P h o n e .. 6 1 7 2 7 4 8 1 7 1 

March/april 2011 | www.broadbandproperties.com | BROADBAND PROPERTIES | 13

InFrAStruCture rAtInG 

Management Services Potential rating 

Design standards compliance with ring or star topology 1 1 

Management portals for residents with bandwidth on demand 1 1 

Real-time traffic management 1 1 

Captive portal messaging 1 

Network equipment management and monitoring 1 

Post-installation 24 x 7 help desk support 1 1 

Access to ongoing performance metrics 1 1 

Total 7 5 

Percentage of total rating 21.21% 

Site Connectivity 

Fiber connectivity to MAN installed and tested 1 1 

Fiber connectivity from MDF to IDFs installed and tested 1 1 

Spare fiber from MDF to IDFs installed and tested 1 

Bandwidth compliance testing to MDF and unit ports 1 1 

Cat 5e connectivity from IDFs to unit installed and tested 1 

Total 5 3 


network equipment 

Standard compliant network equipment 1 1 

Centrally managed switch configs 1 1 

Installed spares 1 1 

Total 3 3 


MDF 

Power properly grounded equipment and equipment rack 1 1 

Wire management and strain relief 1 1 

Optical and electrical termination into patch panel 1 

Room security 1 1 

Room air conditioning 1 

Uninterruptible power supply (UPS) 1 1 

Out of channel connectivity (terminal server) 1 

Total 7 4 


IDF 

Power properly grounded equipment and equipment rack 1 1 

Electrical and optical termination into patch panel 1 

Wire management and strain relief 1 1 

Redundant optical connectivity to MDF 1 

Room security 1 

Room AC 1 1 

Conditioned power 1 1 

Total 7 4 


uDF/unit 

Power properly grounded 1 1 

Redundant Cat 5e connectivity to IDF 1 1 

UDF security 1 

Marked Cat 5e wall plates 1 1 

Total 4 3 

Grand Total 33 22 


Total Rating 100.00% 66.67% 

Infrastructure rating 66.67% 

Figure 2: A sample infrastructure scorecard 


tion refers to the ratio of the allocated 

bandwidth per user to the advertised 

bandwidth per user. Underlying the 

oversubscription model is the fact that 

only a few users will attempt to use their 

allocated bandwidth simultaneously. 

In a DOCSIS cable network, for 

example, the full 38 Mbps download 

bandwidth is typically shared by 500 

subscribers, each of whom is allocated 

up to 7 Mbps. Dividing the maximum 

total bandwidth (property cap) of 38 

Mbps by the maximum number of simultaneous 

users (500) gives an average 

bandwidth per user (contractual cap) 

of 0.076 Mbps, roughly two orders of 

magnitude less than the advertised peak 

bandwidth per user of 7 Mbps. In this 

example, the download oversubscription 

ratio is 92 to 1. 

A similar calculation can be performed 

using upstream bandwidths. 

Advertised DOCSIS upload rates are 

typically 4 times less than download 

speeds. If 100 subscribers, each allocated 

1.75 Mbps of upload bandwidth, 

share a single upstream channel, the upload 

oversubscription is 17 to 1. 

InFrAStruCture 

The quality of network infrastructure 

has a direct impact on the quality of 

services a provider can offer. The infrastructure 

rating matrix shown in Figure 

2 highlights a number of the pitfalls that 

could cause service delivery problems 

down the road. 

The matrix in Figure 2 assumes an 

Ethernet network for several reasons: 

First, Ethernet is the newer and more 

flexible successor to coax-based data 

infrastructure. Second, there is a finite 

number of design, installation and support 

parameters required to build and 

support reliable Ethernet networks. 

Finally, the limited number of parameters 

makes for a fairly straightforward 

means of rating infrastructure. 

In this example, there is no messaging 

system, and the network equipment is 

not monitored. The result is a 5 out of 7 

score for management services. 

This rating system was designed 

for owners and property management 

companies who need to rate property 

infrastructure as part of acquisition due 

diligence. BBP

Bring It On! What does the future hold? When it comes to the broadband future, the possibilities are endless. Already, Over-The-Top 

(OTT) video is making its way into homes and is predicted to dominate the bandwidth supply for the next few years. Additionally, 

entire 3D video walls are being developed for the future that could allow for a near virtual experience — from becoming part of a 

sporting event to exploring the depths of the ocean. 

For service providers, the future means one thing…the demand for high-performance, bandwidth-intensive applications will 

continue to grow. At ADTRAN we say, Bring It On. We recently added Packet Optical Transport System (P-OTS) functionality 

to our industry leading Total Access® 5000 broadband MSAP that can provide 400 Gbps over a single fiber pair. 

As a service provider, it’s time to ask yourself…..Can my network handle the future? What will your customers expect? 

What will you be able to deliver? 

ADTRAN is ready to help you Access Your World. 

Visit us at booth #306 and see why we say, Bring it On! 

CN927A110810TELCODIR Copyright © 2011 ADTRAN Inc. All rights reserved. ADTRAN 

and Total Access are registered trademarks of ADTRAN, Inc. Total Access 5000 

adtran.com

HOrIzON Bay at HyDE ParK 

taMPa, Fla. 

By Joe Bousquin ■ Contributing Editor, Broadband Properties 

In this issue, for the first time, we showcase a fiber-connected senior living community – Horizon Bay at Hyde Park. Our 

thanks go to Verizon’s Eric Cevis and Cliff Lee and to Horizon Bay’s Michael Shaw for assistance in preparing this feature. 

Just because retirees enjoy a slower 

pace of life doesn’t mean they want 

slow Internet connections. When 

Horizon Bay Communities, a senior 

living management company that operates 

94 communities in 19 states, started 

building its flagship properties in its 

hometown of Tampa, Fla., it knew it 

needed more than the Mediterranean- 

inspired design, granite counters and 

abundant lifestyle and activities programs 

that its other communities are 

known for. Horizon Bay wanted to use 

cutting-edge technology to enable its residents 

to lead meaningful lives enhanced 

by strong connections to family and the 

world at large. In fact, that’s the cornerstone 

of the company’s philosophy: helping 

residents feel at home while staying 

fully connected and full of life. 

Now, residents at Horizon Bay Hyde 

Park, a 136-unit mid-rise that is the first 

new senior living community built in 

South Tampa in 20 years, can stay connected 

with a 150 Mbps Verizon FiOS 

connection deployed over a GPON 

backbone. Bulk video programming 

“One of the biggest success stories has been 

watching our residents take advantage of the 

common-area amenities, watching TV together 

or getting online at the Internet café.” 

is included in the rent, and residents 

can take both fiber-based Internet and 

phone services on an à la carte basis. 

In addition to the services delivered 

to individual apartments, Horizon Bay 

at Hyde Park also offers 14 commonarea 

televisions as well as complimentary 

Wi-Fi in common areas. 

The common-area connections not 

only provide organic gathering places 


to bring residents together but also allow 

them to experience the Internet 

communally. “Really, one of the biggest 

success stories of rolling out the Verizon 

FiOS network here has been watching 

our residents take advantage of the 

common-area amenities, watching TV 

together or getting online at the Internet 

café,” says Michael Shaw, executive 

director of Horizon Bay at Hyde Park. 


Joe Bousquin is a contributing editor to Broadband Properties and a journalist with 

more than 15 years’ experience writing about finance, real estate and technology. You 

can reach him at joe@ameredit.com.

The Starbucks Internet Café offers wireless access for Horizon Bay residents. 

Who knows – the residents may even 

be connecting with their grandkids on 

Facebook. 

vItAl StAtS 

Property Description: Horizon Bay 

at Hyde Park is the first independent-living 

and assisted-living 

retirement community built 

in South Tampa in more than 

20 years. The 136-apartment 

community is the flagship of the 

growing Horizon Bay portfolio. The 

state-of-the-art community features 

beautifully appointed apartment 

homes in a Mediterranean-style, 

six-story building. Each apartment 

boasts nine-foot ceilings, a full 

kitchen, granite countertops, walkin 

closets, ceramic tile and carpet 

flooring. 

Horizon Bay at Hyde Park is located 

in the historic Hyde Park area 

of South Tampa and features an Internet 

café, a library, a fitness center, 

a game room, a pool and a bar and 

lounge area, complete with views of 

Tampa Bay. 

Residents enjoy dining, housekeeping, 

scheduled transportation, 

wellness programs, and a full schedule 

of programs and events. Horizon 

Bay at Hyde Park embraces an approach 

to life that creates meaning, 

purpose, inspiration and fulfillment. 

It strives to shatter stereotypes and 

honor residents for the unique lives 

they have led and the interesting stories 

they have to tell. 

Greenfield or retrofit? Greenfield 

Number of residential/commercial units 

136 residential units and 15 commercial, 

business and office suites. 

High-rise/mid-rise/garden style? Mid-rise, 

6 stories 

Time to deploy? The fiber deployment 

was started at the beginning of 

May 2010 (in coordination with 

the builder’s construction schedule) 

and completed at the end of Octo- 

ber 2010. During this six-month period, 

the Verizon construction team 

worked in concert with the developer 

to meet key milestone dates. 

Date services started being delivered? 

FiOS services were made available 

to the property during the first week 

of November 2010, when Horizon 

Bay’s first residents moved in. 

teCHnOlOGy 

The following responses were provided by 

Eric Cevis, vice president of Verizon Enhanced 

Communities. 

How does fiber get to the property? Fiber 

is delivered to the ground-floor 

communications room via a buried 

conduit system that exits at the right 

of way. The distribution splice point 

and fiber distribution hub are located 

nearby. 

How is fiber distributed inside the building? 

From the communications 

room and splice point, six fiber optic 

terminal tails are pulled through a 

4-inch riser to deliver one terminal 

to each floor. Corning ClearCurve 

fiber drop cables are routed through 

Older AmericAns And the internet 

Seniors, though at first slow to start going online, are now accessing the 

Internet in droves. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project’s 

2010 survey, nearly 60 percent of adults between 65 and 73 go online, 

and Internet use among 70- to 75-year-olds has nearly doubled since 2005. 

Shopping online is particularly important for seniors who no longer drive, 

as is staying in touch with families and friends. 

The same Pew survey found that older Americans are also adopting social 

networking faster than any other demographic. The group found that the 

use of social networking has quadrupled since 2008 among Internet users 74 

and older and said that sites such as Facebook may be especially appealing 

to seniors who want to reconnect with people from their past, find support 

communities for chronic diseases or connect with younger generations. 

Other studies suggest that seniors with robust Internet access may live 

healthier lives. The Phoenix Center, a public policy organization in Washington, 

D.C., found that seniors who regularly go online are 20 percent less 

likely to suffer from depression. The Semel Institute for Neuroscience and 

Human Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that using 

the Internet helps keep older brains sharp. 

Then, there’s the fact that home automation and other robust applications 

such as telemedicine are gaining traction. In sum, a fat Internet pipe 

is becoming as important for seniors as it is for 14-year-old gaming fanatics. 


Optical network terminals are mounted in closets, 

where they are out of sight, and inside wiring is 

hidden away behind drywall. 

the interior walls into the closet 

of each unit, where the drop is left 

coiled in a flush-mounted slack storage 

box until service is requested. 

What is the FTTH technology? GPON 

What type of gear is being used? Motorola 

optical network terminals, set-top 

boxes and routers; fiber distribution 

equipment from ADC (now TE 

Connectivity) . 

How did you deal with wiring and plug 

access within the units? We worked 

with the developer to pre-position 

the inside wiring inside the wall 

studs prior to the drywall installation. 

We also worked with the developer 

to have electrical outlets placed 

adjacent to the ONT/5x5 slack storage 

fiber drop locations. 

Have you provided wireless signals within 

units? Verizon deployed one dedicated 

fiber optic drop to each unit. Each 

resident who orders FiOS Internet 

services is provided with a wireless 

router when the service is installed. 

ServICeS 

Does the building have triple-play services? 

Yes, triple-play services are available. 

Are there amenities beyond triple play or 

IP systems for managing the property? 

Horizon Bay at Hyde Park provides 

Fiber cable is routed from the main communications 

room to a fiber distribution terminal 

on each floor. The flexible tubing on the left 

contains fiber from the main comm room, and 

the drop cables for the individual units exit on 

the right. 

wireless access in the Starbucks and 

café area, a fully wired surroundsound 

theater room and 14 commonarea 

televisions. 

Who is the wireless service provider? 

Verizon 

Do residents have a choice of service providers? 

No. Verizon has an agreement 

with Horizon Bay to provide 

bulk TV services through the FiOS 

network. Residents also have the op- 

PrOPerty OF tHe MOntH HIGHlIGHtS: 

HOrIzOn BAy At HyDe PArk, tAMPA, FlA. 

• Luxury mid-rise community offering independent-living and 

assisted-living services to retirees. 

• First new retirement community built in South Tampa in 20 years. 

• Triple-play Verizon FiOS services including bulk video and à la 

carte telephone and Internet. 

• Internet speeds up to 150 Mbps/35 Mbps. 

• Equipment from Motorola, Corning and TE Connectivity. 


tion of adding FiOS Digital Voice 

and FiOS Internet services. 

All Verizon FiOS connection 

speeds are available to the residents 

of Horizon Bay, from our 15 Mbps 

downstream and 5 Mpbs upstream 

all the way to our newest speed of 150 

down and 35 up. Speeds of 25/25, 

35/35 and 50/20 are also available. 

Who provides support? If residents have 

an issue or technical challenge, whom 

do they call? Verizon has a dedicated 

center for Verizon Enhanced Communities 

Value Program subscribers 

for ordering, billing and other 

account-related questions. For technical 

assistance, it offers a 24/7 Fiber 

Solutions Center. 

The property is also supported 

by a representative from Verizon 

Enhanced Communities’ Customer 

Advocacy Group, local operations 

and marketing services. 

BuSIneSS 

Who owns the network? Michael Shaw, 

Horizon Bay: We own the wiring in 

the units and have a separate homerun 

wire back to the communications 

closet for our future use. 

Verizon owns the backbone and 

the home-run wiring to the demarcation 

point at the terminus of the 

interior wiring, located inside the 

communications closets. 

Was there a door fee? Michael Shaw: Yes, 

$150 per door. 

Are services automatically included in the 

rent? 

Eric Cevis, Verizon: Yes, FiOS TV Prime 

HD package is included as part of 

the amenities package, including an 

HD set-top box. Incremental services, 

including FiOS Internet and 

phone service, may be ordered directly 

by the residents. 

Who handles billing and collection? 

Eric Cevis: The contracted bulk video 

service is billed directly to the developer. 

Any package upgrades, additional 

services or products ordered 

directly by a resident are billed directly 

to the resident by Verizon. 

How are the services marketed, and by 

whom?

After leaving the fiber distribution terminal, 

the drop cables are routed into microducts 

that provide pathways to each unit. The microducts 

have room for additional fiber that 

may be needed in the future. 

Eric Cevis: Verizon Enhanced Communities 

provides brochures and other 

marketing materials about FiOS 

services on-site for residents, and a 

dedicated account manager works 

with the property management staff 

to organize and host on-site informational 

events to explain the services 

to residents. 

On-SIte exPerIenCe/ 

leSSOnS leArneD 

What was the biggest challenge? 

Subsurface precast concrete ground vaults 

provide technicians with access to underground 

facilities, typically at splice or distribution 

terminal locations. 

Michael Shaw: As with any deal, negotiations 

were the biggest challenge. It 

was challenging, at points, to get all 

the right decision makers in the loop, 

and we had to negotiate a marketrate 

deal with Verizon so we could 

make sure both we and our residents 

realized value from the bulk services. 

At the same time, Verizon needed 

to manage its own interests. For instance, 

the escalation clauses in the 

contract came very close to killing 

the deal, but we were able to come to 

a mutually acceptable solution. 

What was the biggest success? 

Michael Shaw: Watching our residents 

use the common-area space with Verizon 

TVs or the Internet café while 

enjoying the cornerstone of the Horizon 

Bay experience: feeling at home, 

full of life and fully connected. 

What would you say to owners who want 

to deploy a similar network? 

Two computers are set up for resident use near the Internet Café. 

In each master bedroom closet, the micro- 

duct and fiber drop cable were pre-positioned 

inside the wall during construction. An ONT 

will be placed here when service is requested. 

An electrical outlet is positioned close by to 

power the ONT. 

Michael Shaw: Make sure you deal with 

the decision makers in any organization 

right from the start. When you 

get into the details of something like 

this, a myriad of decisions needs to 

be made at each step, so communicating 

with the individuals who 

have the authority to proceed at each 

juncture is critical. 

How did the vendor interact with residents 

during installation? Were there 

any guidelines or requests from the 

owner over limiting residents’ pain 

points during installation? 

Eric Cevis: Because the fiber deployment 

took place during the construction 

phase, before any residents had 

moved in, the developer was able to 

eliminate any concerns regarding 

disruption to its residents. All the 

necessary hardware and other wiring 

equipment is in place and was carefully 

designed to require minimal 

disruption to activate services as new 

residents move into their units. BBP 


Fiber Deployment StrategieS 

allied Fiber 

Nationwide Network Uses 

Bold New approach 

With dark fiber to major interconnection points and colocation facilities 

every 60 miles, the company aims to provide unprecedented network 

access for community networks, data center operators and others. 

By Joan Engebretson 

By some measures, the Allied Fiber 

network is the most ambitious 

fiber network build to have been 

planned for at least a decade. It uses a 

network architecture not quite like anything 

that’s ever been built before. And 

if CEO Hunter Newby’s vision is correct, 

the network’s mere existence should 

use the Allied Fiber network to easily 

reach those traffic exchange points. 

“We come from a world of solving 

interconnection problems,” says Newby, 

who previously was chief strategy officer 

for Telx, a pioneer in the neutral colocation 

market. Newby expects the Allied 

Fiber network to attract a diverse mix of 

The Allied Fiber network is expected to attract 

rural network operators and community 

networks seeking economical connectivity to 

Internet points of presence. 

vastly improve the economics of bringing 

first-mile fiber networks to communities 

that, to date, have struggled to 

support broadband business models. 

Ultimately, Allied Fiber’s own business 

model isn’t as much about the 

network as it is about interconnecting 

other carriers. Allied Fiber will not be 

installing its own transport equipment. 

It will sell long-term dark fiber leases to 

other carriers, which will light their own 

networks. 

Importantly, the company’s plan 

includes a network presence in major 

carrier traffic exchange points in critical 

markets such as New York, Miami and 

Seattle, enabling network operators that 

companies that range from small rural 

network operators and community networks 

seeking economical connectivity 

to Internet points of presence to international 

carriers seeking a low-latency way 

to cross the North American continent. 

exPlOItInG Pent-uP DeMAnD 

The Allied Fiber plan seems to be resonating 

with the right people. “There’s a 

known need in the industry for new in- 


Joan Engebretson is a Chicago-based freelancer who has been writing about the telecom 

industry since 1993. She can be reached at joanengebretson@cs.com. 


frastructure between markets, given the 

lack of available dark fiber,” comments 

Ben Edmonds, executive vice president 

of sales and marketing for FiberLight, a 

company that has built fiber networks in 

21 markets in the southern half of the 

United States. “You always want to exploit 

where there’s a limited supply and 

pent-up demand, and that’s what Allied 

Fiber has tried to do.” 

The Allied Fiber network, Edmonds 

says, could be complementary to the 

metro networks FiberLight already has 

deployed. 

“A multitenant fiber build has a lot 

of value to our customers,” comments 

Jim Poole, general manager of global 

networks and mobility for Equinix, the 

company whose carrier-neutral colocation 

facility in Ashburn, Va., will be a 

tether point for Phase 1 of the Allied 

Fiber network. The connection to the 

Equinix exchange will give Allied Fiber 

easy access to an existing base of 190 

network providers already connected to 

the exchange. 

Phase 1 of the Allied Fiber network – 

interconnecting New York, Chicago, 

Ashburn and points in between – is 

nearing completion, and with four more

phases still to go, Newby notes, “We 

have a line out the door of banks that 

want to finance Phase 2.” 

neW yOrk tO CHICAGO, 

AnD POIntS In BetWeen 

What makes the Allied Fiber network 

unique is its use of two separate highcount 

dark fiber bundles that run in 

parallel. The company refers to one fiber 

batch, consisting of 432 fibers, as its 

long-haul network and the other, with 

216 fibers, as its short-haul network. 

There is also an empty fiber duct for future 

expansion. 

Local and regional network operators 

will be able to tap into the shorthaul 

network almost anywhere along 

the fiber route. It won’t be necessary to 

run a connection all the way to a major 

metro market. 

Every 60 miles, the optical signal 

needs regeneration, and at each of those 

points, carriers will be able to interconnect 

with other carriers via a crossconnect, 

to shift traffic from the shorthaul 

to the long-haul network and to 

colocate transport equipment, such as 

dense wavelength-division multiplexing 

equipment, switches and routers, but 

not servers. 

Although Allied Fiber expects to 

generate much of its initial revenue from 

long-term leases (known as indefeasible 

rights of use, or IRUs) on dark fiber, 

the company’s ultimate prize is the re- 


curring revenue it expects to earn from 

colocation in the Allied Fiber–owned 

colo-regen facilities along the route. 

This approach is a far cry from the 

way most fiber networks are designed. 

Traditionally, carriers could tap into fiber 

networks only in major metropolitan 

areas. Fiber might pass through smaller 

markets like Toledo and Altoona, but 

often there was no way to connect to it. 

Newby argues that this goes a long 

way toward explaining why smaller 

markets with populations between 

25,000 and 300,000 tend not to have 

high-speed broadband availability. “Nobody 

is building fiber to the anything in 

those towns,” says Newby, noting that 

some entire towns have only a DS-3 

connection to the public Internet. 

“The choke point you can’t get around 

is backhaul,” Newby argues. “You can 

build in town but not to New York.” 

One nationwide network operator 

that has architected its network with on- 

and off-ramps primarily in major metro 

markets is XO Communications, and 

that company is beginning to see the 

Phase 1 of Allied Fiber’s network is nearing completion, and four more phases are planned. 

Local and regional network operators will be 

able to tap into the short-haul network almost 

anywhere along the fiber route. 

logic of Allied Fiber’s approach. 

Don MacNeil, vice president of operations 

for XO Communications, notes 

that for years the company’s network 

passed through Charlotte, N.C., without 

picking up or dropping off traffic 

there. “Two years ago, we decided to 

create a stop there, and we were able 

to open the market very easily,” recalls 

MacNeil. 

XO now is looking at the possibility 

of using the Allied Fiber network as 

a means of serving some of the smaller 

markets along the Allied Fiber route. 

MacNeil cites the hypothetical example 

of a local Pennsylvania ISP that might 

obtain more economical Internet connectivity 

by using new XO facilities 

running over dark fiber from Allied Fiber. 

“I can take him to my big Internet 

router in New York and give him better 

economics,” MacNeil explains. 

DIy AttItuDe neeDeD 

Newby is quick to offer up some compelling 

data about Phase 1 of the Allied 

Fiber network. More than 130 towns 

within a mile of the Phase 1 network 

have populations between 25,000 and 

500,000, he says. 

With Allied Fiber paving the way 

for economical backhaul connectivity, 

Newby says, it shouldn’t be difficult for 

those markets to support local broadband 

builds. But communities shouldn’t 

count on carriers to step in, he cautions. 

“Some towns are stuck in the mindset 

that someone will bring them broadband,” 

observes Newby. “But you have 

to have a do-it-yourself attitude.” 

Increasingly, towns and municipalities 

are realizing that, Newby says. He 

points to the Axcess Ontario network in 

upstate New York as an example of what 

towns and municipalities can achieve 

on their own. (Axcess Ontario is run by 

a public-benefit corporation set up by 



More than 3,000 counties have populations of 

around 100,000. All could benefit from fiber 

networks constructed like Allied Fiber’s. 

Ontario County, N.Y.) “They [the 

county] have 100,000 people. They built 

a fiber ring that they lease to eight providers. 

They did it on their own. They 

put up the money. They spent $5 million 

to build a 200-mile ring.” 

The 130-plus communities along 

Allied Fiber’s Phase 1 route are wellpositioned 

to do the same thing, Newby 

argues. But he doesn’t stop there. 

“There are 3,140 counties in the U.S. 

with an average population of 100,000,” 

notes Newby. “That means there are 

that many opportunities to build the 

same kind of network and link them 

all. And the Allied Fiber approach is the 

bridge to link them all.” 

Unfortunately, Allied Fiber isn’t planning 

to reach every one of those counties. 

Nevertheless, Newby says, “You have to 

do this for all of America. I’ll share my 

model with anybody and encourage 

them to do this where I’m not.” 

AllIeD FIBer’S GeneSIS 

Newby honed much of his thinking 

about open access and carrier-neutral 

interconnection seven or eight years ago 

at Telx, which started out as an international 

provider of wholesale minutes. 

Many carriers had to interconnect with 

one another within the carrier exchange 

at 60 Hudson Street in New York City, 

and as Newby recalls, “Everyone was in 

60 Hudson, but they weren’t in the same 

place.” 

Telx established a platform that enabled 

carriers to easily interconnect with 

one another at the physical layer, then 

extended that approach to other key carrier 

meeting points, eventually making 

carrier interconnection the focus of its 

business. Key concepts underlying the 

business are standard physical layer connection 

and open access – which also 

drive the thinking at Allied Fiber. 

The genesis of Allied Fiber came 

from two pivotal encounters that Newby 

experienced while working for Telx. The 

first encounter was in 2004, when Telx 

bought the 56 Marietta Street building 

in Atlanta, which serves as a traffic exchange 

point, with the goal of setting up 

a neutral interconnection platform there. 

The building’s previous owners “had no 

idea what they had bought,” Newby recalls. 

“They bought the building to convert 

it to loft condos, and they were upset 

they couldn’t throw the carriers out.” 

Newby went to Atlanta to explain 

Telx’s interconnection philosophy to 

the carriers that were connected at the 

facility. One of his meetings was with a 

potential client, Norfolk Southern Corporation. 

The company, a railroad, had 

rights of way behind the building and 

had already installed clear innerduct 

spanning thousands of miles in the eastern 

United States. The ductwork had 

been installed during the digital boom 

period, and the railroad had tried, without 

success, to get the previous owners 

of 56 Marietta Street to allow it into the 

building. Telx had no objection. 

As soon as the ducts were brought 

in, two network operators used them to 

install fiber. “It really strengthened the 

building,” Newby says. 

Newby also recognized that at some 

future point, the Norfolk Southern ductwork 

could be a valuable platform for a 

new fiber network build. He was confident 

he would know when the time was 

right. 

The period between 2004 and 2007 

was one of consolidation in the longhaul 

market, with lots of fiber network 

bargains to be found. By 2007, Newby 

realized that conditions had changed 

when Telx got an inquiry from a major 

international carrier asking for assistance 

in finding dark fiber to connect 

subsea landing points. “Either the fiber 

didn’t exist, or the carriers wouldn’t sell 

it,” Newby says. 


Also around this time, Telx was sold 

to a new investment group, and Telx 

CEO Rory Cutaia left to join private 

equity firm Corinthian Capital, urging 

Newby to look at deals with him. 

Newby told him, “Instead of looking for 

deals, I have a deal.” 

The upshot was that Newby cut a deal 

with the railroad to use its ductwork and 

rights of way nationwide and was able to 

obtain construction completion financing 

from principals of Corinthian and 

from other individuals who had been 

involved with Telx in its early days. In 

addition, Newby secured a commitment 

for senior debt from Falcon Investment 

Advisors and ABRY Partners. 

PHASInG In tHe netWOrk 

As of mid-March, Allied Fiber had 10 

carriers signed up to use Phase 1 dark 

fiber, with dozens more contracts still 

being finalized. Signing the deals were 

traditional interexchange carriers, competitive 

carriers and cable multiple systems 

operators, says Newby, who also 

expects to see companies using Allied 

Fiber’s dark fiber for mobile backhaul. 

The company already has customers 

lined up for Phase 2, which will extend 

the network to Miami, and for Phase 3, 

which will take it to Seattle, Newby says. 

The final two phases will extend the network 

from Seattle to southern California 

and then from southern California back 

to Miami. Phases 2 through 5 will be a 

bit more challenging than Phase 1 from 

a construction point of view, however, 

because ductwork has not been installed 

along those routes. 

DAtA Center OPPOrtunItIeS 

Ductwork and rights of way aren’t the 

only benefits that Allied Fiber gets from 

working with the railroad. There’s something 

else, too – and it relates to the 

railroad’s heritage of serving the heavy 

industrial and manufacturing locations 

that flourished during a different era. 

The network runs through areas that 

have great access to major sources of 

power at some of the best prices available 

anywhere – as low as 3 cents per 

kilowatt hour, according to Newby. 

That access to power captured the attention 

of Pod Global, a company that

is planning to install containerized data 

center parks at several locations along the 

Allied Fiber route, where it has not only 

found great pricing on power but also 

plenty of capacity. “Every location will 

support 100 megawatts, and we’ll have 

100 containers or more at each location,” 

says Pod Global CEO Lee Hansen. The 

container shell, he says, is the same type 

of ISO9001 shipping container used on 

railroad cars and tractor trailers. 

Pod Global has not yet revealed the 

specific markets where its containerized 

data centers will be located, but Hansen 

said an initial location is likely to be in 

Indiana. 

The company is seeing strong interest 

from major users of data centers that 

are running out of either space or power 

at existing facilities. The excellent connectivity 

via the Allied Fiber network to 

major traffic exchange points makes a 

containerized approach viable and economical 

in some of the markets along 

the route, Hansen says. He believes most 

customers will manage their equipment 

remotely, drawing on local Pod Global 

staff when needed. 

Because power accounts for such a 

large part of the cost of data center service, 

data center operators tend to charge 

clients for monthly service, including 

floor or rack space, based on peak power 

consumption, explains Hansen. Pod 

Global expects to charge about $150 per 

kilowatt per month, which is a far cry 

from the $700 per kilowatt per month 

commanded by some major data center 

operators. 

“When we tell people $150 a kilowatt 

and you can do your own dark fiber, 

almost everyone’s eyes widen,” says 

Hansen. 

Hansen expects to find local business 

clients for his centers as well. His 

enthusiasm for the potential long-term 

economic impact of the Allied Fiber 

network matches Newby’s – as long as 

data centers are part of the equation. 

“Fiber is of epic importance, but if there 

is no data center space, there’s nothing,” 

comments Hansen. 

Many small communities have 

been “swept under the rug” because of 

technology changes, he says. But with 

high-speed connectivity and data cen- 


Allied Fiber’s mix of long-haul and short-haul fiber lets carriers tap into the network every 60 miles. 

ters more widely available, he predicts, 

“there will be an uptake of utilization 

from localized regions, which will play 

a role in the economic development of 

the regions.” 

Hansen even goes as far as predicting 

“an increase in property values and 

an influx of population” to smaller markets 

reached by Allied Fiber or similar 

networks. Many people, he says, don’t 

want to live in metro regions, but they 

are forced to do so today. 

InveStOrS Are AttrACteD 

Not everyone is sold on the idea of using 

data centers so remote from traditional 

interconnection points. In certain circumstances, 

they say, latency could be 

an issue. 

For example, MacNeil doesn’t expect 

XO to be a heavy user of data centers 

along the Allied Fiber route. He 

says that although XO might put some 

equipment in those centers to serve tenants 

in the centers, it will continue to 

rely primarily on data centers in major 

metro markets. 

Nevertheless, even skeptics may have 

to admit that a containerized data center 

approach could be well-suited to markets 

along the Allied Fiber route because 

of the difficulty of predicting demand in 

some of these markets. 

“The chances of accurately predicting 

your IT requirements are very low 

and, considering the costs of data center 

construction, the risk is very high,” 

comments Waite Ave, managing partner 

for Universal Networking Services, a 

company that sells and installs containerized 

data centers and has had inquiries 

from financial firms that are considering 

establishing centers along the Allied Fiber 

route. “If a customer needs to grow, 

we simply deploy another modular container,” 

says Ave, adding that containerized 

data centers are well-suited for disaster 

recovery use. 

According to Newby, neither demand 

uncertainty nor other concerns 

have deterred some traditional data 

center operators from making plans to 

locate along the Allied Fiber route. “I 

know of at least three data center projects 

on the Phase 1 route,” comments 

Newby. One of them, which he says is 

“the biggest data center I’ve ever seen,” is 

“on the east coast, directly on the route.” 

Clearly, Allied Fiber is attracting 

significant investment and interest at a 

time when any type of infrastructure 

spending seems to be scrutinized more 

closely than ever. Newby says he has also 

received inquiries from governments of 

other countries asking him to help them 

adopt a similar approach as a means of 

driving broadband deployment in their 

countries. 

Some of those who buy into the Allied 

Fiber vision, including Hansen, are 

just as evangelical as Newby is about 

it. “Hunter [Newby] will change the 

face of the United States and the global 

economy because we’ll be able to jump 

back in with both feet – all of us, not 

just some of us,” says Hansen. BBP 


Whether it’s a heart-wrenching email from a Moroccan 

prince or signs at intersections promising thousands per 

month for selling items on eBay, get rich quick schemes 

usually send up red flags for most of us. We have been 

taught since an early age that if it seems too good to be 

true, it probably is. Ninety-nine percent of the time this is 

a helpful instinct that keeps us from losing our identities, 

savings and time from predators who seek to prey on the 

naive. However, what about the one percent of time that it 

could keep us from missing a viable opportunity to generate 

legitimate additional income? By attempting to avoid scams 

and wasted time, are we, as owners, occasionally missing out 

on ways to enhance our bottom line? 

One area where many owners miss out on potential 

opportunities is internet and television service. Just as soda 

companies pay arenas a fee to sell drinks and advertise 

to its patrons, so should telecommunications companies pay 

for the same access to sell and advertise to your residents. 

You are providing a huge set of potential customers, so you 

should be proportionally compensated for your part in their 

sales process. 

However, not all telecommunications companies and/or 

arrangements are created equally. Here are a few important 

steps to go through prior to making any binding decisions or 

signing any contracts.

Payment Structures 

The two most common types of ancillary income are door 

fees and revenue sharing agreements. While it can be 

tempting to sign the first good deal that comes along, take 

the time to negotiate and look at every provider in your 

area. While one company may initially offer a relatively 

low revenue share, they may be willing to go higher if they 

feel as though they may lose your business to a competitor. 

However, don’t settle for the first big figure that you hear. 

Revenue shares are based on the percentage of occupied 

units as well as the number of occupants who choose to 

subscribe to the service. While a good provider will 

attract new subscribers, it won’t make a drastic change. For 

example, if only 40 percent of your residents have Internet 

service, and the model you’re looking at is dependent 

on an 80 percent subscription rate, you’ll probably have 

to readjust your expectations. A great provider may 

moderately increase subscription rates, but don’t expect 

them to double. 

A factor that does profoundly affect subscription rates is the 

number of providers on the property. As Carl E. Kandutsch, 

a former FCC lawyer, recently explained in Broadband 

Properties Magazine, “Say for instance, in exchange for 

the grant of exclusive marketing rights and/or the exclusive 

use of inside wiring, the cable company pays the owner a 

door fee of $150 per unit, as well as a share of its monthly 

revenue, in amounts based on those typically found in cable 

right-of-entry agreements. The up-front door fee payment 

of $52,500, amortized at 6 percent, amounts to about $767 

per month, or $9,200 per year, over the seven-year term. 

This looks pretty good until we consider how much potential 

rent is lost because prospective tenants are stuck with no 

choice among service providers. Remember our assumption 

that the average monthly rental income from one resident is 

$800, or $9,600 yearly.” 

Only allowing one provider usually increases revenue for 

the short term, it may cause people to leave your community 

at the end of their lease. It usually doesn’t take the loss 

of more than a couple of units to quickly outweigh the 

additional revenue. 

There are ways around this problem. Some companies act 

as service provider managers and can negotiate revenue 

sharing options with multiple service providers. They work 

with them to get the best deal for you, and you only have to 

work with one company, eliminating a lot of frustration and 

confusion. By working with these kinds of companies, you can 

have the best of both worlds of maximizing revenue and 

offering choice. 

Choice isn’t the only factor in keeping residents happy. 

Quality of service and support are key to ensuring residents 

don’t feel trapped by their providers. The best way to check 

on this is to talk to other owners about their experiences 

with customer support. If your doubts linger, ask for the 

customer service line, call, and see how fast and courteous 

the response is. If you wouldn’t want to talk to the person 

on the other end of the line, don’t ask your residents to do 

the same. 

Ultimately, the key to finding the right services that enhance 

your bottom line and the happiness of your residents is due 

diligence. Take the time to find out what your residents like, 

what they want in their services, listen and find a provider 

who can deliver. There are companies who offer both quality 

service and competitive ancillary income options, if you take 

the time to do your research. 

w w w . c n x n t e c h . c o m | 9 1 9 . 5 3 5 . 7 3 2 9 

c n x n t e c h | C o n n e x i o n T e c h n o l o g i e s | C o n n e x i o n T e c h n o l o g i e s

hot proDuctS 

Broadband Properties 

10th Annual list 

Of leading Broadband 

technologies and services 

COMPAny 

The latest offerings from top broadband hardware and 

software suppliers, distributors and service providers. 

MDu/PCO 

InDuStry 

SeGMentS 

telCOS 

CABle tv 


HOSPItAlIty 

MunICIPAlItIeS 

ACtIve eleCtrOnICS - WIrelIne 

ACtIve eleCtrOnICS - WIreleSS 

vIDeO HeADenDS AnD 

relAteD equIPMent 

PASSIveS - OutSIDe PlAnt 

3M 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 

ADTRAN 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 

PASSIveS - InSIDe PlAnt 

PrODuCtS 

AnD ServICeS 

Advanced Media Technologies 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 

CuStOMer-PreMISeS equIPMent 

StruCtureD WIrInG 

teSt equIPMent 

Internet AnD vIDeO ServICeS / 

PrOGrAMMInG 

OtHer MAnAGeD ServICeS 

PlAnnInG, DeSIGn Or 

COnStruCtIOn 

trAInInG 

AFL 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 

AT&T Connected Communities 3 3 

ATX Networks 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 

Blonder Tongue Laboratories 3 3 3 3 3 3 

Calix 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 

Channell Corp 3 3 3 3 3 

Charles Industries 3 3 3 3 3 3 

Clearfield Inc. 3 3 3 3 3 3 

Comcast 3 3 

Connexion Technologies 3 3 3 

Corning Cable Systems 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 

BACk-OFFICe SOFtWAre 

CuStOMer-FACInG APPlICAtIOnS

MDu/PCO 

3M Communication Markets Division 

6801 Riverplace Blvd. 

Austin, TX 78726 

P: 512-984-4641 

Contact: Linnea Wilkes 

E: lmwilkes@mmm.com 

W: www.3m.com/onepass 

Segments of Industry Served: MDU/PCO; Telcos; 

Hospitality; Municipalities 

Products and Services: Passives – Outside Plant; 

Passives – Inside Plant; Customer-Premises Equipment; 

Structured Wiring 

hot proDuctS 

InDuStry 

SeGMentS 

telCOS 

CABle tv 

HOSPItAlIty 

MunICIPAlItIeS 

ACtIve eleCtrOnICS - WIrelIne 

ACtIve eleCtrOnICS - WIreleSS 

vIDeO HeADenDS AnD 

relAteD equIPMent 

PASSIveS - OutSIDe PlAnt 

PASSIveS - InSIDe PlAnt 

PrODuCtS 

AnD ServICeS 

In 2009, 3M unveiled the 

revolutionary 3M One 

Pass Fiber Pathway to enable 

fast, low-cost installation 

of FTTP networks 

in brownfield multipledwelling 

units. Now, 3M 

introduces the newest addition 

to its One Pass family 

of products, the 3M One Pass Mini Fiber Pathway. The One 

Pass Mini is a low-profile, single-fiber cable pathway solution 

designed to take fiber beyond the hallway, deep into a living unit 

discreetly and with minimal subscriber disruption. And like its 

March/april 2011 | www.broadbandproperties.com | BROADBAND PROPERTIES | 27 

CuStOMer-PreMISeS equIPMent 

StruCtureD WIrInG 

teSt equIPMent 

Internet AnD vIDeO ServICeS / 

PrOGrAMMInG 

OtHer MAnAGeD ServICeS 

PlAnnInG, DeSIGn Or 

COnStruCtIOn 

trAInInG 

COMPAny 

COS Systems 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 

DISH Network 3 3 3 3 3 3 

Display Systems International 

G4S Technology 

3 3 3 3 3 3 

(formerly Adesta) 3 3 3 

Mac Gray 3 3 

Multicom Inc. 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 

OFS 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 

Radiant Communications 3 3 3 3 3 

Spot On Networks 3 3 3 3 

Sumitomo Electric Lightwave 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 

Suttle 3 3 3 3 3 3 

Televes USA LLC 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 

Time Warner Cable 

Verizon Enhanced 

3 3 

Communities 3 3 3 

ViewTEQ 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 

Walker and Associates 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 

BACk-OFFICe SOFtWAre 

CuStOMer-FACInG APPlICAtIOnS

older brother, the One Pass Mini Fiber Pathway utilizes exclusive 

3M adhesive technology, which ensures reliable installation 

on a wide variety of surfaces, even painted or sealed concrete. 

Together, the 3M One Pass Fiber Pathway and the new 3M 

One Pass Mini Fiber Pathway, both terminated with the highperformance 

3M No Polish Connector, provide a complete, 

cost-effective and aesthetically pleasing fiber solution for MDUs, 

both inside and outside the living unit ... the Total Package. 

ADtrAn 

901 Explorer Blvd. 

Huntsville, AL 35806 

P: 256-963-8000 

F: 256-963-7916 

Contact: Kim Brashears 

E: kim.brashears@adtran.com 

W: www.adtran.com 

Segments of Industry Served: MDU/PCO; Telcos; Cable 

TV; Hospitality; Municipalities 

Products and Services: Active Electronics – Wireline; Active 

Electronics – Wireless; Customer-Premises Equipment 

The ADTRAN Total 

Access 5000 MSAP is a 

carrier-class multiservice 

access and aggregation 

platform that bridges the 

gap between existing and 

next-generation networks. 

With a pure Ethernet core, 

the Total Access 5000 

supports both legacy and 

emerging service interfaces over both copper and fiber, easily 

scaling to support even the most bandwidth-intensive applications. 

The innovative product was recently cited for adding 

Packet Optical Transport Switching (P-OTS) to its list of applications 

for access networks. 

Total Access 5000 is built around a pure Ethernet core. All 

incoming services, regardless of protocol, are handled as Ethernet, 

creating a native service delivery model for advanced services 

without stranding existing legacy services. This allows the Total 

Access 5000 to economically address multiple network applications 

with traditional network interfaces. It also addresses advanced 

capabilities such as Ethernet Ring Protection Switching, 

VDSL2, 10 GigE, GPON, active Ethernet, WDM and OTN. 

Advanced Media technologies 

3150 SW 15 th Street 

Deerfield Beach, FL 33442 

P: 954-427-5711 

F: 954-427-9688 

Contact: Rob Narzisi 

E: rnarzisi@amt.com 

W: www.amt.com 

hot proDuctS 



Cable TV; Hospitality; Municipalities 

Products and Services: Active Electronics – Wireline; 

Video Headends and Related Equipment; Passives – 

Outside Plant; Passives – Inside Plant; Customer-Premises 

Equipment; Test Equipment 

Economically disruptive 

LAN solution that will 

revolutionize the way voice, 

video and data are distributed 

throughout enterprises. 

POL replaces existing LAN 

connections with a single 

high-capacity fiber optical 

cable designed to connect end users directly to the data center. 

Derived from carrier-grade passive optical networking (PON) 

technology, POL allows end users to realize substantial capex 

and opex savings while taking significant steps toward becoming 

more green. 

AFl 

PO Box 3127 

Spartanburg, SC 29304 

P: 864-433-0333 

F: 864-433-5363 

Contact: Tony Nieves 

E: tony.nieves@aflglobalc.om 

W: www.aflglobal.com 

Segments of Industry Served: MDU/PCO; Telcos; Cable 


Products and Services: Video Headends and Related 

Equipment; Passives – Outside Plant; Passives – 

Inside Plant; Customer-Premises Equipment; Structured 

Wiring; Test Equipment; Planning, Design or 

Construction; Training 

IDEAA – Integrated Distribution 

Enabling Access 

Apparatus: The IDEAA 

product family revolutionizes 

the way passive optical 

splitter modules are deployed 

in the outside-plant 

network. An alternative to 

traditional splitter-modulein-cabinet 

designs, IDEAA 

allows service providers to 

provision PON splitter module 

needs with less upfront cost by using a common footprint 

module. Additionally, the IDEAA product family allows quick 

and easy termination of distribution fibers using the latest AFL 

FuseConnect technology. 

Because it uses a small modular design, the IDEAA product 

can be installed in many different applications. This allows

service providers to manage a single type of splitter module to 

service and upgrade all their PON applications. 

Applications include direct wall mount, interior wall 

mount enclosure or pedestal, exterior wall mount enclosure, 

exterior distribution enclosure or pedestal, exterior distribution 

cabinet, sealed splice closure and rack mount bracket. 

At&t Connected Communities 

2180 Lake Blvd. 

Atlanta, GA 30319 

P: 404-829-8895 

F: 404-829-8818 

Contact: Thuy Woodall 

E: tw5598@att.com 

W: www.att.com/communities 

Segments of Industry Served: MDU/PCO 

Products and Services: Internet and Video Services/ 

Programming 

AT&T Connected Communities is a specialized division of 

AT&T dedicated to creating alliances with apartment ownership 

and management groups, single-family builders, developers 

and real estate investment trusts within our 22-state service 

area. As a leading global provider of high-speed Internet, advanced 

TV, home phone service and wireless communication 

services, our mission is to develop reliable technology solutions 

that bring AT&T’s complete offering of the latest communications 

and entertainment services to your community and residents. 

Aligning with AT&T Connected Communities, which 

is backed by a single point of contact, ensures a rewarding marketing 

partnership and seamless technology deployment while 

increasing the value of your community. To learn more, visit 

www.att.com/communities. 

Atx networks 

1-501 Clements Rd. W. 

C 

Ajax, ON, L1S7H4 Canada 

P: 800-565-7488 

M 

F: 866-427-1964 

Y 

Contact: Tim Buck 

CM 

E: tbuck@atxnetworks.com 

MY 

W: www.atxnetworks.com 

CY 

Segments of Industry Served: MDU/PCO; Telcos; Cable CMY 


K 

Products and Services: Active Electronics – Wireline; Video 

Headends and Related Equipment; Passives – Outside 

Plant; Passives – Inside Plant; Customer-Premises Equipment; 

Test Equipment 

The DVIS line from 

ATX Networks is 

designed for MDU 

digital insertion or 

for applications that 

require content back- 

hot proDuctS 

haul from a remote location. The DVIS can MPEG-2 encode 

up to 10 programs, demodulate an incoming QAM, create a 

new multiplex of encoded content and demodulated content 

and then transmit it via QAM or IP (RJ45/SFP). The DVISm 

(Mini) is scalable from 1 to 4 programs. These MDU hardened 

designs include integrated RF management and an industryleading 

digital channel deletion filter. They can be configured 

for any digital insertion method, including add, add/drop or 

drop on an existing QAM, QAM deletion and reinsertion or 

QAM insertion at the band edge. An IP-based management 

port with onboard Web server and SNMP support allows users 

to configure and monitor the DVIS/DVISm remotely. The 

gldsad-qrtrpageFINAL.pdf 6/18/09 10:39:16 AM 

DVISn (Nano) is scalable from 1 to 2 programs and is geared 

WWW.GLDS.COM 800-882-7950 SALES@GLDS.COM 


toward applications requiring a basic and cost-effective QAM 

insertion into an empty EIA channel or at the band edge. 

http://www.atxnetworks.com/digital-video-insertion 

ATX Networks has expanded its UCrypt product offering, 

which is designed to support operators with the delivery 

of content into hospitality and bulk MDU accounts, so that 

virtually any deployment architecture and distribution application 

can be addressed. The UCrypt QAM-to-QAM product 

was designed to transition content from HFC plant and retransmit 

into an MDU/hotel in Pro:Idiom/clear QAM format. 

Expanding upon the success of that product, ATX has now included 

both IP and analog output capabilities in the UCrypt so 

that operators can service IPTV-based hospitality accounts and 

address accounts where supplying every dwelling with a set-top 

box is not practical. ATX has also developed IP to Pro:Idiom 

QAM, IP to Pro:Idiom IP, QAM to IP and QAM to analog as 

a part of the UCrypt product suite to provide operators with 

the ability to deploy Pro:Idiom encrypted content in a more 

centralized manner. http://www.atxnetworks.com/bulk-qamto-qam-gige-analog-mdu 

Blonder tongue laboratories Inc. 

One Jake Brown Road 

Old Bridge, NJ 08857 

P: 800-523-6049 

F: 732-679-1886 

Contact: Lauren Yesler 

E: lyesler@blondertongue.com 

W: www.blondertongue.com 

Segments of Industry Served: MDU/PCO; Cable TV; 

Hospitality; Municipalities 


Equipment; Training 

MUX-12A-IP (Multiplexer; 12:1 ASI-to-IP) is designed to 

utilize a common hardware platform for two similar but separate 

applications. The IPTV mode is ideal for cherry-picking 

applications and to allow operators to create custom-made 

channel lineups by grooming SD and HD programs on an asneeded 

basis. The RF QAM mode is suitable for distribution 

over coaxial networks, 

and each 

input ASI stream 

can contain up to 

three programs – 

typical for digital 

off-air broadcasting 

applications. 

The multiplexer 

is Emergency Alert System (EAS) compliant in both modes – 

the operator can assign ASI port #12 as an EAS input which, 

when activated, will override the content of all other ASI inputs. 

Comprehensive remote monitoring and control is accomplished 

via a GUI-based interface using any standard Web 

browser. Please come to Booth #206 at the 2011 BBP Summit 

hot proDuctS 


or visit www.blondertongue.com for more information on our 

Edge/IP Solutions. 

Calix 

1035 N. McDowell Blvd. 

Petaluma, CA 94954 

P: 707-766-3000 

F: 707-766-3100 

Contact: David Russell 

E: david.russell@calix.com 

W: www.calix.com 




Passives – Outside Plant 

The 716GE-I is the first 

indoor ONT in the 

industry that supports 

both GPON 

and active Ethernet in 

the same home unit. The 

716GE-I is designed to address a wider range of indoor settings. 

Its modern, consumer product–inspired design enables 

it to be located in public settings, such as desktops and visible 

wall locations, but its wider temperature specifications allow it 

to be used in garage and laundry-room settings. The 716GE-I 

offers two POTS and four GE ports and all the most valued 

features of Calix 700GE ONTs: 

• Support for both GPON and active Ethernet (AE) through 

the unique Calix auto-detect technology 

• Full symmetrical, line-rate GE 

• Every port separately provisioned 

• Support for multiple services (VLANs) over each GE port 

• Remote ONT activation (RONTA) via a voice response 

system 

• Voice services – both TDM and VoIP (SIP and H.248, 

MGCP in the near future) 

Channell Corp 

PO Box 2099 

Temecula, CA 92589 

P: 951-719-2600 

Contact: Jill Orr 

E: jorr@channell.com 

W: www.channell.com 


Cable TV; Municipalities 

Products and Services: Passives – Outside Plant 

Channell is into FTTH fiber, pits and enclosures: Channell’s 

newest generation of FTTH fiber optic cable splicing, storage 

and management systems features field-upgradable splice tray 

enclosures and options. The superior strength of our Signature

Grade Level Boxes (SGLB) is combined 

with our Multiple Access Housing 

(MAH) pedestal for easy, 360-degree access 

to our splice tray enclosure products. 

The thermoplastic MAH pedestal provides 

protection from extreme 

elements, and its patented 

universal bracketry design just 

snaps in and out of the SGLB 

base for quick access and 

hassle-free maintenance challenges. 

Charles Industries 

5600 Apollo Drive 

Rolling Meadows, IL 60008 

P: 847-806-6300 

F: 847-806-6231 

Contact: Brad Wackerlin 

E: bwackerl@charlesindustries.com 

W: www.charlesindustries.com 

Segments of Industry Served: MCU/PCO, Telcos; 



Passives – Inside Plant 

Charles CUBE RL Series Cabinets: Compact and compartmentalized, 

Charles CUBE RL Series remote cabinets are ideal 

for backhaul and other remote electronics equipment deployments 

at cell 

sites, MDUs, 

business parks 

and other multiuserlocations. 

Separate 

locking compartments 

for 

service provider equipment, customer equipment and powering 

are available to allow service providers the ability to restrict 

customer and technician access to individual compartments. 

RL Series cabinets are designed to support traditional 19” 

or 23” rackmount equipment and may be mounted on walls, 

H-frame channels or poles. They are made in the United States, 

certified to Telcordia GR-487 specifications and available with 

several options, including heat exchangers, copper and fiber 

cable management, solar shields and AC or DC powering. 

AC panels that include circuit breakers, surge suppression and 

GFCI receptacles are also available. 

Clearfield Inc. 

5480 Nathan Ln. 

Plymouth, MN 55442 

P: 763-476-6866 

F: 763-475-8457 

Contact: Lindsay Golz 

hot proDuctS 

E: lgolz@clearfield.com 

W: www.clearfieldconnection.com 

Segments of Industry Served: 

MDU/PCO; Telcos; 


Products and Services: 

Passives – Outside Plant; 

Passives – Inside Plant 

Delivering small fiber counts to 

the access network just got a whole lot easier! 

The FieldSmart Small Count Delivery (SCD) Case from 

Clearfield delivers any type of fiber construction or optical 

component to any point in the access network. It is optimized 

for above- or below-grade deployment in Clearfield’s 

new CraftSmart Optical Protection (OP) pedestal or vault and 

combines the low-cost fiber management features of Clearview 

xPAK with an innovative sealed enclosure. 

Leading the industry in modularity, the FieldSmart SCD 

Case can also be deployed directly out of the box with aerial or 

pole mounting hardware. 

Comcast Cable 

1701 JFK Blvd. 

Philadelphia, PA 19103 

P: 800-COMCAST 

Contact: Bill Revell 

E: multifamily_team@cable.comcast.com 

W: www.comcast.com 



Programming 

Comcast Corporation is one of the nation’s leading providers 

of entertainment, information and communications products 

and services. We value our partnerships with multifamily communities 

as we help them deliver the best in entertainment to 

their residents. All Comcast services bring valuable benefits to 

each customer’s home, including XFINITY TV, XFINITY Internet 

and XFINITY Voice. We hold our products, service and 

people to the highest standards because our goal is to provide 

a superior customer experience. Serving residents in 36 states 

and the District of Columbia, Comcast will partner with you 

to meet all your residents’ communications needs. 

Connexion technologies 

111 Corning Road, Ste. 250 

Cary, NC 27518 

P: 919-535-7342 

F: 919-882-9338 

Contact: Susan Knowles, Media Relations Coordinator 

E: susan.knowles@cnxntech.com 

W: www.cnxntech.com 



Products and Services: Other Managed Services; 

Planning, Design or Construction 

Connexion Technologies customizes and manages advanced 

communications networks in residential properties nationwide. 

Its networks optimize the communication experience 

and value of properties for residents and owners. 

Connexion Technologies is not a service provider; rather, 

it selects and manages providers that offer entertainment and 

communication applications, including enhanced television, 

telephone and Internet services over Connexion’s providerneutral 

networks. The company is based in Cary, N.C. It was 

established in 2002 and serves properties nationwide. For more 

information, visit us at www.connexiontechnologies.net 

Corning Cable Systems 

800 17th Street NW 

Hickory, NC 28603 

P: 828-901-5000 

F: 828-901-5488 

Contact: Dave Kiel 

E: dave.kiel@corning.com 

W: www.corning.com/cablesystems 




Passives – Inside Plant; Test Equipment; Planning, 

Design or Construction; Training 

Corning Cable Systems, a 

global innovator and 

industry leader in 

optical networking, 

offers a complete 

solution optimized 

for FTTx networks. 

Through its Evolant Solutions, 

Corning Cable Systems 

provides a range of innovative products, including optical cable, 

hardware and equipment products designed to make FTTx 

deployments faster, easier, more reliable and less costly. The 

Corning Connected Community Program assists homebuilders 

and community developers with implementing fiber optic 

infrastructures into their building plans, while the Corning Total 

Access Program provides highly qualified design, engineer, 

furnish and install companies with the tools necessary to ensure 

successful fiber-to-the-home and wireless deployments. FTTx 

consultants and network designers have access to a diverse range 

of tools and resources through the Corning FTTxpert Program. 

COS Systems 

16 Coddington Wharf #2 

Newport, RI 02840 

P: 617-274-8171 

Contact: Ronald Corriveau, VP Business Development 

hot proDuctS 


E: ron.corriveau@cossystems.com 

W: www.cossystems.com 



Products and Services: Back-Office Software; 

Customer-Facing Applications 

COS is an operations,administration 

and management 

solution that 

offers secure, automated 

provisioning 

and monitoring for 

broadband networks. 

It provides 

a comprehensive solution for automating the operational and 

business processes critical to selling, provisioning and managing 

broadband networks. 

COS offers a secure, highly customizable self-service portal 

that lets customers select offerings such as triple play from multiple 

service providers. COS automatically provisions services 

offered to subscribers from the COS portal, sends customer 

and billing information to the relevant service provider and 

enables the services, all in a matter of minutes. 

By automating all the activities needed to provision and 

manage subscribers, COS improves customer satisfaction, lowers 

service deployment costs and accelerates revenues. For more 

information, visit us at www.cossystems.com 

DISH network 

9601 S. Meridian Blvd. 

Englewood, CO 80112 

P: 720-514-5811 

Contact: Troy Barclay 

E: troy.barclay@dishnetwork.com 

W: www.commercial.dishnetwork.com 


Hospitality 


Equipment; Internet and Video Services/Programming; 

Planning, Design or Construction 

DISH Network offers best-in-class programming at a competitive 

rate for multitenant buildings, student housing, singlefamily 

neighborhoods, hospitals and assisted-living properties. 

Services range from bulk programming delivered to an entire 

complex to customized digital, video and Internet solutions. 

DISH is the smart choice for business, providing the best in 

high-definition, international, movie and sports programming 

plus local channels in every market. Our technology is available 

across all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the USVI. 

No matter what the infrastructure, DISH has a solution to 

maximize a property’s appeal and help sell units faster. Scalable 

solutions combined with technical innovation go beyond 

the specific requirements of property owners and management

companies to provide unique, value-added product to service 

any property’s needs. www.Commercial.Dishnetwork.com 

Display Systems International 

2214 Hanselman Ave. 

Saskatoon, SK S7L6A4 

P: 306-934-6884 

F: 306-934-6447 

Contact: Whitney Lemke 

E: whitney.lemke@displaysystemsintl.com 

W: www.displaysystemsintl.com 




Equipment 

Display Systems International’s 

Video Information 

Player (VIP) is 

a powerful, easy-to-use 

video display administration 

system. The 

machine’s intuitive, Webbased 

control system gives you the ability 

to control multiple units in remote locations using a single 

login. The VIP can handle almost any video file format, and 

the machine’s online interface ensures cross-platform compatibility. 

The VIP is capable of meeting your needs regardless of 

the scale of your operation, and is useful for everything from 

controlling a single electronic bulletin board to running a fullfledged 

community information channel. 

DSI has more than 25 years of experience in the broadcast 

industry and specializes in providing a diverse array of services 

that include scrolling channel guides, TV listings data and digital 

signage solutions. The company has recently added “Best 

Customer Service” to the long list of awards received and has 

recently expanded its operations, not only in space but staff 

as well. 

G4S technology (formerly Adesta) 

1200 Handmark Center, Ste. #1300 

Omaha, NE 68102 

P: 402-233-7700 

F: 402-233-7650 

Contact: Laura Kocher 

E: laura.kocher@usa.g4s.com 

W: www.g4stechnology.com 

Segments of Industry Served: MDU/PCO; Telcos 

Products and Services: Planning, Design or Construction 

G4S Technology (formerly Adesta) specializes in the design 

and implementation of modern communications networks and 

infrastructure for public and private customers. A trusted provider 

of facilities, equipment and personnel for a wide variety 

of communications infrastructure, we offer custom-tailored, 

hot proDuctS 

results-oriented services in SONET, IP/Ethernet, DWDM/ 

CWDM, wireless, last-mile and broadband networks. 

Since 1988, G4S Technology has deployed more than 2 million 

fiber miles. We can help develop a greenfield network or 

integrate into an existing infrastructure. We work with both 

inside- and outside-plant facilities and provide all types of networks 

for voice, data and video applications. Our wide range 

of services includes design, engineering, cable and equipment 

procurement, aerial and underground installation, construction, 

system testing and turn-up, fusion splicing and documentation. 

G4S Technology is a founding member of the Fiber-to-the- 

Home Council and specializes in last-mile and broadband solutions 

for ILECs, CLECs, utilities, municipalities, economic 

development projects and rural broadband cooperatives. 

Mac-Gray 

404 Wyman St., Ste. 400 

Waltham, MA 02451 

P: 888-MAC-GRAY 

F: 781-290-4890 

Contact: Don Baumann 

E: customercare@macgray.com 

W: www.macgray.com 


TEAM FENEX announces an addition to the family! The proven line of 

Fiber Optic Splicing Labs now has a new addition – a Baby Brother! 

The CUB, expands the quality FOSL family to four sizes of trailers. 

Maintaining the features and construction of its bigger brothers, the 

CUB provides greater maneuverability in an eco-friendly manner. 

Shorter turning radius, lighter overall weight, and shorter overall 

length are just a sample of the features achieved by this single axle 

design. The new TEAM FENEX 6’ X 8’ CUB is ready for work! 

For information call 

TEAM FENEX SALES @ 1-800-88FENEX 


Products and Services: Other Managed Services 

Mac-Gray is the premier 

multifamily provider of 

energy-efficient commercial 

laundry equipment, 

award-winning local support 

and cutting-edge 

services and technologies. 

Our specialized programs 

and superior equipment 

options are proven to increase 

revenues and resident 

satisfaction while reducing 

utility costs. 

Mac-Gray is proud to introduce Change Point – a revolutionary, 

Internet-based laundry payment and monitoring system, 

incorporating patented technology and proprietary features 

to ensure 100-percent revenue accountability, increased 

resident satisfaction and more. 

By connecting washers and dryers to the Internet, Change 

Point gives residents the ability to pay for each cycle with a 

debit card, credit card or coin, eliminating the chore of finding 

the correct number of quarters and the need to keep track of or 

replenish a laundry card. Change Point also utilizes Mac-Gray’s 

proprietary LaundryView monitoring system, offering robust 

service and revenue-tracking capabilities for property owners. 

To learn more about Change Point, please visit www.mac 

gray.com/changepoint. 

Multicom Inc. 

1076 Florida Central Parkway 

Longwood, FL 32750 

P: 407-337-7779 

F: 407-339-0204 

Contact: Scott Brietz 

E: Multicom@multicominc.com 

W: www.multicominc.com 


Cable TV; Hospitality 


Video Headends and Related Equipment; Passives – Outside 

Plant; Passives – Inside Plant; Customer-Premises 

Equipment; Structured Wiring; Test Equipment; Internet 

and Video Services/Programming; Other Managed 

Services; Planning, Design or Construction; Training 

Multicom is proud to announce a complete FTTH RFoG solution 

that includes Multicom’s 1550 transmitter, high-power 

EDFA, optical splitters, nano node and high-sensitivity return 

path receiver. Designed to scale to a wide variety of applications 

from greenfield to HFC upgrades to GPON migration, this 

solution enables Multicom to provide all required active and 

passive components for complete, end-to-end FTTH solutions. 

Multicom’s RFoG products integrate with existing headends, 

CMTS and set-top boxes, resulting in a seamless, cost- 

hot proDuctS 


R 

effective deployment. 

Multicom’s sales engineers 

have FTTH Professional 

Certification and 

proven track records for 

providing the product 

and service solutions you 

need. Stocking 13,000 

products from more than 

270 of the world’s major 

manufacturers, we provide 

answers to today’s 

most challenging issues and the products to implement even 

the most sophisticated projects. 

Headquartered in Orlando, Fla., since 1982, Multicom is 

a full-line stocking distributor and manufacturer of products 

used for end-to-end integration of voice, data, and video over 

fiber, coax and copper at cost-effective prices. Call Multicom 

at 800-423-2594, email multicom@multicominc.com or visit 

www.multicominc.com 

OFS 

2000 N.E. Expressway, 

Ste. B030 

Norcross, GA 30071 

P: 888-Fiber-Help 

�� 

888-342-3743 from inside the U.S.A. 

770-798-5555 from outside the U.S.A. 

For questions about Specialty Photonics 

Division Products and Services: 860-678-0371 

F: 770-798-3872 

E: ofs@ofsoptics.com 

W: www.ofsoptics.com 




Passives – Inside Plant; Test Equipment; Planning, 

Design or Construction 

OFS is a world-leading 

designer, manufacturer 

and provider 

of optical fiber, optical fiber cable, FTTx, optical connectivity 

and specialty photonics products. Our manufacturing and research 

divisions work together to provide innovative products 

and solutions that traverse many different applications as they 

link people and machines worldwide. Between continents, between 

cities, around neighborhoods and into homes and businesses 

of digital consumers we provide the right optical fiber, 

optical cable and components for efficient, cost-effective transmission. 

OFS’ corporate lineage dates back to 1876 and included 

technology powerhouses such as AT&T and Lucent Technologies. 

Today, OFS is owned by Furukawa Electric, a multibillion-dollar 

global leader in optical communications.

Headquartered in Norcross (near Atlanta), Ga., OFS is a 

global provider with facilities in Avon, Ct.; Carrollton, Ga.; 

Somerset, N.J.; and Sturbridge, Mass., as well as in Denmark, 

Germany and Russia. 

radiant Communications 

5001 Hadley Rd. 

South Plainfield, NJ 07080 

P: 908-757-7444 

F: 908-757-8666 

Contact: Tom Lewis 

E: tlewis@rccfiber.com 

W: www.rccfiber.com 

Segments of Industry Served: MDU/PCO; Hospitality; Municipalities 


Equipment; Customer-Premises Equipment 

Easily insert local content including security camera feeds, locally 

created video content, character generators and more with 

Radiant’s local digital insertion products. They come in rackmountable 

and wall-mountable versions or in compact cassette 

packages the size of cable modems. Easily configurable with a 

front panel or our simple-to-use GUI. Features drop/add capabilities 

that give property owners control of their channel 

lineups. 

Spot On networks 

55 Church Street 

New Haven, CT 06510 

P: 877-768-6687 

F: 203-773-1947 

Contact: Jessica DaSilva 

E: jdasilva@spotonnetworks.com 

W: http://www.spotonnetworks.com 

Segments of Industry Served: MDU/PCO; Hospitality 


Programming; Other Managed Services 

Spot On Networks offers communitywide Wi-Fi networks 

for the multifamily industry. Residents can use their laptops, 

smartphones, tablets, gaming devices and more throughout 

the entire community – in their apartments, at the pool, in the 

clubhouse and more! Spot On’s networks are fully managed 

and CALEA-compliant and offer unlimited data for smartphones 

and tablets. 

Spot On has deployed networks at more than 400 properties 

covering more than 70,000 residential units in 26 states. Spot 

On deploys 802.11 b/g/n networks. In addition to providing 

hot proDuctS 

communitywide Internet 

access, a Spot On Wi-Fi network 

can act as a backbone 

for energy management, water 

management and utility 

cost-saving devices. 

High-speed Wi-Fi Internet 

has been ranked as the 

number one amenity for 

apartment residents. Call 

now to find out more about 

the benefits of deploying 

a managed Wi-Fi network 

throughout your community: 

877-768-6687 www. 

spotonnetworks.com 

Sumitomo electric 

lightwave 

PO Box 13445 

78 T.W. Alexander Dr. 

Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 

P: 800-358-7378 

Contact: Customer Service 

E: info@sumitomoelectric.com 

W: www.sumitomoelectric.com 





Structured Wiring; Planning, Design or Construction 

The Lynx2-MPO, offered for ribbon and round-cord, loosetube 

and patch-cord terminations (pictured top right), brings 

breakthrough technology to customized on-site connectivity 

for virtually any network termination project. Yielding better 

performance than other termination methods, the Lynx2- 

MPO allows technicians to terminate typically in less than 

three minutes for ribbon and less than five for loose tube. Build 

cable to the exact length on site and make quick repairs and 

restorations without pre-engineering, logistical delays, or the 

risk of shorts and slack that preterminated cables and pigtails 

entail. Also offered are SC, ST, LC, and FC connectors. 

Sumitomo Electric Lightwave offers solutions that include 

the industry’s highest-quality and most reliable optical fiber 

cable, fusion splicers and accessories, optical network products 


and FutureFLEX air-blown network solutions. Visit www. 

sumitomoelectric.com, www.futureflex.com and http://www. 

youtube.com/user/SumitomoRTP. Call today and ask for 

customer service at 800-358-7378. Visit us at the Broadband 

Properties Summit, Booth# 513. 

Suttle 

1001 E. Hwy 212 

Hector, MN 55342 

P: 800-852-8662 

F: 320-848-6218 

E: suttlesales@commsysinc.com 

W: www.suttleonline.com 

Segments of Industry Served: MCU/PCO; Telcos 


Passives – Inside Plant; Customer-Service Equipment; 

Structured Wiring 

Suttle HomePNA Coax Gigabit 

Ethernet Adapter (CES- 

2CUA): Suttle’s HPNA Gigabit 

Coax Ethernet Adapter 

(CES-2CUA) enables 

setup of a home network 

using existing coaxial 

cable with no additional 

wiring or setup. Simply connect 

the home’s gateway device to an 

adapter and plug it into any coax connector 

to feed IP video and high-speed data to any coax 

port on the network. The adapter includes intelligence to 

support various services, including VLAN tagging, queuing 

schemes and bandwidth control. 

televes uSA llC 

9800 Mount Pyramid Ct., Ste. 400 

Englewood, CO 80112 

P: 303-256-6767 

F: 303-256-6769 

Contact: Javier Ruano 

E: jruano@televes.com 

W: www.televes.com 

Segments of Industry Served: MDU/PCO; Cable TV; Hospitality 

Products and Services: Active Electronics – Wireline; Video 

Headends and Related Equipment; Passives – Outside 

Plant; Passives – Inside Plant; Customer-Premises Equipment; 


H45 Advance Series – Advanced HDTV System Analyzers: 

The H45 Advance series are new-generation, real-time digital 

processing test solutions designed for digital and analog cable, 

satellite and off-air HDTV signal analysis. 

KEY FEATURES: 

• Real-time digital processing 

hot proDuctS 


• MPEG-4, full-HD TV signal display and measurements 

• Optical interface with built-in optical receiver 

• Professional-grade spectrum analyzer (2 MHz to 3.3 GHz) 

• Workflow automation 

• Portability and ease of use 

HDTV TESTING MADE SIMPLE – One single tool 

covers every testing need: 

• CATV – QAM Annex A/B/C · NTSC 

• SATELLITE – DVB-S · 8PSK · DSS · DVB-S2 

• OFF-AIR – ATSC/8VSB · NTSC 

• DIGITAL PROCESSING: 

Traditional sweep architecture meters spend more time 

missing signal information than measuring it! The H45 has 

been designed from the ground up to instantaneously obtain 

all the information in a signal in real time. With 20MHz digitally 

captured every 10ms, no detail escapes H45’s eye. The 

H45 with real-time digital processing is a total revolution. 

time Warner Cable 

13820 Sunrise Valley Drive 

Herndon, VA 20171 

P: 703-345-2749 

Contact: Joanne C. Luger 

E: joanne.luger@twcable.com 

W: timewarnercable.com 



Programming 

Time Warner Cable Mobile Internet provides 

our customers with an 

online connection that’s 

there for them on their 

terms. It’s a totally portable 

Internet connection, so our 

customers never have to 

search for Wi-Fi hotspots. 

The IntelliGo Mobile Hotspot 

creates a personal 

hotspot to share a secure, 

superfast Internet connection 

with up to five users or

Wi-Fi enabled devices that include printers, cameras, laptops 

and game consoles. It’s perfect for business meetings, road 

trips, family outings and more. It’s portable enough to fit into 

a briefcase, backpack, purse or even a jacket pocket. It is user 

friendly with a simple interactive setup and has GPS capability, 

expandable storage and more. It is the safe and secure Time 

Warner Cable Internet our customers know, on the go. 

verizon enhanced Communities 

13100 Columbia Pike 

Silver Springs, MD 20904 

P: 866-638-6066 

Contact: Jessie Chesson 

E: Jessie.a.chesson@ 

verizon.com 

W: www.verizon.com/communities 



Programming; Customer-Facing Applications 

Verizon Enhanced Communities is Verizon’s business unit 

dedicated to serving single- and multifamily residential, 

mixed-use, and commercial multitenant properties with Verizon 

FiOS Internet, TV and phone services delivered b over the 

award-winning Verizon FiOS all-fiber-optic network. Verizon’s 

hot proDuctS 

Motorola’s Passive 

Optical LAN Solution… 

Fiber to the ________. 

A. Desk 

B. Dorm 

C. Guestroom 

D. Hospital Bed 

E. Classroom 

F. All of the Above 

Motorola’s Passive Optical LAN (POL) Solution is a highly reliable and 

economically disruptive LAN solution that will revolutionize how voice, 

video and data are distributed throughout the enterprise. POL replaces 

existing LAN connections with a single high capacity fiber optical cable 

designed to connect the end user directly to the data center. Derived from 

carrier grade passive optical networking (PON) technology, POL allows 

end users to realize substantial CAPEX and OPEX savings while taking 

significant steps towards becoming a more green enterprise. 

For more information, call us at 888.293.5856 or visit amt.com. 

fiber-to-the premises network has the bandwidth to support 

the latest technologies today and those to come in the future. 

Verizon offers programs that benefit property owners as 

well as unique services that enhance any community by differentiating 

it from a property without FiOS services. Verizon 

makes it easy, providing custom installation with dedicated 

management and engineering teams as well as ongoing customer 

service. Learn how your property can get an upgrade 

and benefit from the value of having an all-fiber-optic network 

at www.verizon.com/communities. 

viewteq 

1020 NW 6 th St., Ste. A 

Deerfield Beach, FL 33442 

P: 954-351-1121 

F: 954-351-6977 

Contact: Carl Klein 

E: carlk@viewteq.com 

W: www.viewteq.com 

Advanced Media Technologies ® | 3150 SW 15th Street | Deerfield Beach, FL 33442 

954.427.5711 | www.amt.com | sales@amt.com 

MOTOROLA and the Stylized M Logo are registered in the US Patent and Trademark Office. © Motorola, Inc. 2011 

Motorola AXS 1800 

Multiple Solutions. One Source. 



Cable TV; Hospitality 

Products and Services: Video Headends and Related Equipment; 



The ViewTEQ VTM12 integrated headend system consists 

of a 12-slot mounting chassis, up to 12 high-quality SAW 

filter modulators, a plug-and-play backplane, an integrated 

12-channel combiner and a universal 90-260V power supply. 

Install the modulators by sliding them into the chassis slots. 

This connects the power plug and also connects the modulator 

output directly to the integrated 12-way combiner, eliminating 

unnecessary cabling and potential connection problems. 

The VTM12-CPC chassis and VTM12-* modulators use only 

three rack units, making for easy installation and efficient use 

of rack space. All components come with three-year warranties. 

Walker and Associates 

7129 Old Hwy 52 N 

Welome, NC 27374 

P: 800-WALKER1 

F: 336-731-3089 

Contact: Randy Turner 

E: randy.turner@walkerfirst.com 

W: www.walkerfirst.com 

hot proDuctS 


Segments of Industry Served: Telcos; Cable TV; 

Municipalities 


Active Electronics – Wireless; Structured Wiring; 

Test Equipment; Planning, Design or Construction; 

Customer-Premises Equipment 

Walker and Associates is the premier distributor of network 

products solutions. It provides world-class supply-chain management, 

network deployment kits, quality installation, expert 

systems integration and unsurpassed service to U.S. telecommunications 

service provider markets. 

Since 1970, Walker has remained an aggressive industry 

leader by offering products that support leading-edge technologies, 

such as IP, network access, 802.11 wireless, point-to-point 

wireless, Ethernet over copper, CWDM, passive connectivity, 

digital cross-connect systems, power products, cable, routers, 

Ethernet switching and more. 

Walker’s services help reduce the costs of installing and 

maintaining equipment at customer locations. The company 

helps its customers solve business challenges and increase their 

ability to meet their customers’ expectations. 

The company is celebrating 40 years of success with a regular 

service base of over 1,200 domestic service provider customers. 

Walker and Associates is headquartered near Winston- 

Salem, N.C., and is a certified women-owned corporation. 

Don’t miss the 

bonus pages in our 

Digital 

editions 

Go to www.bbpmag.com/subscribe 

and START or RENEW your subscription now.

March 31, 2011 

D.I.S.H. 

Department of Intelligent Stuff and How 

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 

MEMO: Re: Really Important Secrets 

This document shall demonstrate that unknown secret truths 

exist. On April 26, these unknown secret truths will be 

revealed by DISH Network Business Services. Pertaining to 

XXXXXXX and XXXXXXXXXX, the revelation will change the way 

you XXXXXXXXXX. Also, XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. With this information, 

you will significantly XXXXXXXXXX and your business will 

XXXXXXXXXX ultimately making you lots of XXXXXXXXXXXX. This is 

some serious XXXXXXXXXX and should not be taken lightly. Find 

the unknown secret truths at Booth 313 in XXXXXXXX, Texas at 

the 2011 Broadband Properties XXXXXXXXXXX. 

CLASSIFIED 

CLASSIFIED 

CLASSIFIED 

Phone code: 720.514.5811

the laW 

Cable Home Wiring rules 

and Cable Competition 

MDU owners who want to open their properties to multiple cable providers 

may be able to use the FCC’s cable home wiring rules for this purpose. 

By Carl E. Kandutsch ■ Attorney 

Are the FCC’s inside wiring rules, 

including the rules for homerun 

wiring and cable home wiring, 

still relevant in a competitive marketplace 

characterized by nonexclusive 

access to multidwelling unit (MDU) 

properties? 

In an article in the January/February 

issue of Broadband Properties, I 

identified three reasons property owners 

might be reluctant to use the Commission’s 

procedures for gaining control 

over home-run wiring: First, implementation 

of those procedures is complex, 

time-consuming and easily blocked or 

delayed by incumbent cable operators; 

second, whether and how the rules apply 

when the same wiring is used by 

the incumbent cable operator to deliver 

services other than video services is unclear; 

and third, the rules may be preempted 

by contractual language in the 

incumbent’s right-of-entry agreement. 

This article suggests ways for MDU 

owners to leverage other FCC regulations 

– the rules for cable home wiring 

(47 C.F.R. § 76.802) – to achieve results 

they might otherwise attain by means of 

the home-run wiring rules (47 C.F.R. 

§ 76.804) while avoiding some of the 

problems with those rules. 

Note: The legal analyses of FCC 

regulations presented in this article are 

for informational purposes only and 

should not be construed as legal advice. 

Interested parties are strongly advised to 

consult with legal counsel prior to undertaking 

any action based in whole or 

in part on the analyses included herein. 

To begin, let’s recall some defini- 

tions. The FCC defines home-run wiring 

as “the wiring from the demarcation 

point to the point at which the multichannel 

video programming distributor’s 

(MVPD’s) wiring becomes devoted 

to an individual subscriber or individual 

loop.” 1 By contrast, cable home wiring is 

“the internal wiring contained within 

the premises of a subscriber which begins 

at the demarcation point.” 2 

Stated without the jargon, home-run 

wiring is on the provider’s side of the demarcation 

point, and cable home wiring 

is on the subscriber’s side of the demarcation 

point. The location of the cable 

demarcation point therefore determines 

which wiring is home-run wiring and 

which wiring is cable home wiring. 

We will return to the concept of 

the demarcation point later. First, we 

provide a brief summary of the cable 

home wiring rules, with an eye toward 

answering the question: Can anything 

be achieved by use of the home-run 

wiring procedures that cannot be more 

easily achieved by use of the cable home 

wiring rules? 

CABle HOMe WIrInG ruleS 

The cable home wiring rules were first 

promulgated in 1993 to address the 


disposition of in-building wiring when 

customers in single-family homes terminated 

cable services. The rule was 

intended as a consumer protection measure 

to prevent a cable operator from preempting 

a subscriber’s desire to switch to 

another cable provider by threatening to 

remove wiring from inside the subscriber’s 

home. The rule prohibited removing 

wiring on termination of service unless 

the cable company had offered to sell the 

wiring to the subscriber at a quoted purchase 

price. 

In its 1997 rule-making proceeding, 

the FCC expanded its regulatory regime 

to address wiring in MDU buildings. 

To accommodate wiring in the MDU 

environment, the Commission divided 

in-building wiring into two subcategories: 

cable home wiring runs inside an 

MDU resident’s living unit, ending at 

the demarcation point 12 inches outside 

the unit, and home-run wiring extends 

from the demarcation point through the 

building’s hallways to the cable operator’s 

junction box (where the wiring first 

becomes “devoted to an individual subscriber”). 

Cable home wiring in MDU 

units would be treated like wiring in a 

single-family residence under 47 C.F.R. 


Carl Kandutsch holds a Ph.D. from Yale University and a J.D. from the University 

of Washington. A former FCC lawyer, he currently has a private legal practice and 

is a principal at ComGroup Associates LLC, a consulting firm that represents professionals 

in the multifamily real estate industry with regard to telecommunications 

matters. You can reach Carl at ckandutsch@verizon.net or 207-659-6247. Find out 

more at www.kandutsch.com.

§ 76.802 (with minor adjustments), and 

home-run wiring would be subject to 

the procedures specified in 47 C.F.R. § 

76.804. 

Unlike the home-run wiring rules, 

which regulate the relationship between 

the cable operator and the owner of the 

MDU building, the cable home wiring 

rules address the relationship between 

the cable operator and the subscriber. 

The FCC’s rule for cable home wiring 

in MDU buildings provides that when 

an individual subscriber in an MDU 

building voluntarily terminates service, 

the cable operator may not remove the 

cable home wiring unless it offers to sell 

the wiring to the terminating subscriber 

at replacement cost, the subscriber declines, 

and neither the MDU owner nor 

the alternative provider notifies the cable 

operator that it wishes to purchase the 

wiring after the subscriber declines. 

“If the [incumbent cable operator] is 

entitled to remove the cable home wiring, 

it must then remove the wiring within 

seven days of the subscriber’s decision 

[not to purchase], under normal operating 

conditions, or make no subsequent 

attempt to remove it or restrict its use.” 3 

The effect of the cable home wiring 

rules is to transfer ownership of the home 

wiring – the cable wiring on the subscriber’s 

side of the demarcation point – from 

the incumbent cable company to the subscriber 

who terminates cable service. In 

other words, home wiring not removed 

by the incumbent within seven days after 

the subscriber’s voluntary termination 

of cable service is deemed abandoned to 

the subscriber. Presumably (depending 

on the state’s abandoned-property laws), 

when a former cable subscriber moves 

out of his or her unit without removing 

the home wiring, that wiring is abandoned 

and becomes the property of the 

building owner. 

As the legal owner of home wiring 

that is not removed after termination 

of services, the terminating subscriber 

or the property owner may authorize an 

alternative video provider to connect its 

signal distribution system to the wiring 

at the demarcation point. The incumbent 

provider has an affirmative obligation to 

facilitate the alternative provider’s access 

the laW 

Placing the demarcation point 12 inches outside 

a subscriber’s doorway did not help alternative 

providers gain access, because that point was 

usually behind drywall and inaccessible. 

to the wiring at that point. According 

to the rule, incumbent cable operators 

“must take reasonable steps within their 

control to ensure that an alternative service 

provider has access to the home wiring 

at the demarcation point.” 4 

tHe SHeetrOCk OrDer’S eFFeCt 

As mentioned above, the cable demarcation 

point is important because it marks 

the boundary between cable home wiring 

(on the subscriber’s side of the demarcation 

point) and home-run wiring 

(on the provider’s side). The FCC defines 

the cable demarcation point as “a 

point at (or about) 12 inches outside of 

where the cable wire enters the subscriber’s 

dwelling unit, or, where the wire is 

physically inaccessible at such point, the 

closest practicable point thereto that 

does not require access to the individual 

subscriber’s dwelling unit.” 5 

If one of the essential functions of 

the demarcation point was to facilitate 

competition by designating a location 

at which alternative providers could access 

existing inside wiring, 6 the FCC’s 

definition did not well serve that goal: 

Apartment owners were loath to allow 

alternative video providers to bore 

holes through drywall in the hallway 12 

inches outside residential units, and few 

alternative providers were eager to snake 

cable wiring from a junction box behind 

drywall through hallways to individual 

units. 

The Commission addressed this dilemma 

in 2007 by issuing the so-called 

Sheetrock Order. 7 In that Order, the 

FCC ruled that in any building where 

the inside wiring is located behind drywall 

at the presumptive demarcation 

point 12 inches outside a unit, the wiring 

is considered to be “physically inaccessible,” 

and the demarcation point is 

located at the point where the wiring 

first becomes physically accessible. In a 

typical MDU building, the wiring first 

becomes physically accessible at the incumbent’s 

junction box. 

The Sheetrock Order was first announced 

in the FCC’s 2003 amendment 

of the wiring rules. 8 Cable overbuilder 

RCN-BeCoCom LLC had filed a request 

for a letter ruling that described 

its difficulties accessing cable home wiring 

at demarcation points 12 inches outside 

subscribers’ units. Because property 

owners were reluctant to allow RCN 

to drill through drywall in hallways at 

demarcation points, RCN’s only options 

were to install additional sets of 

home-run wires or to access the wiring 

at incumbents’ junction boxes in utility 

closets. 

The first option was a nonstarter because 

building owners objected to the 

disruption associated with installing 

a second wire. As for the second possibility, 

“[n]or was connecting to the 

operator’s existing wire [at the junction 

box] an option … because the operator 

refused to cooperate in allowing such a 

connection.” Therefore, “RCN urges the 

Commission to find that cable wiring 

behind Sheetrock is ‘physically inaccessible,’ 

such that the demarcation point 

should be located not at the 12-inch 

mark, but rather at the operator’s junction 

box.” 9 RCN’s request was granted. 

Although the FCC surely understood 

that, for all practical purposes, 

its Sheetrock Order would move the demarcation 

point to the junction box in 

a typical MDU building, the Commission 

chose not to make that understanding 

explicit. The Commission discreetly 

addressed the matter in a footnote: “We 

note that exactly where the wiring will 

become accessible (because it is no longer 

behind brick, cinderblock or sheetrock) 

will vary building by building.” 


the laW 

Under the cable home wiring rules, an 

alternative provider can access home wiring at 

the demarc point seven days after the 

subscriber terminates cable service. 

The net effect of the Sheetrock Order 

is this: 

In any case where video cable wiring 

12 inches outside a residential unit 

is concealed behind drywall, the cable 

demarcation point is located at the junction 

box. Therefore, all video wiring on 

the subscriber’s side of the junction box, 

extending all the way inside the subscriber’s 

unit, is considered cable home 

wiring, and no home-run wiring exists. 

Recall that home-run wiring is defined 

as “the wiring from the demarcation 

point to the point at which the 

MVPD’s wiring becomes devoted to 

an individual subscriber or individual 

loop.” According to the Sheetrock Order 

in the circumstance described, the 

demarcation point is located at the junction 

box. However, the junction box is 

also “the point at which the MVPD’s 

wiring becomes devoted to an individual 

subscriber.” Because the demarcation 

point and the point at which the 

MVPD’s wiring becomes devoted to an 

individual subscriber are one and the 

same, there is no home-run wiring. 

On the other hand, cable home 

wiring is defined as “the internal wiring 

contained within the premises of a 

subscriber which begins at the demarcation 

point.” If the demarcation point 

is located at the junction box, then all 

the horizontal wiring – extending from 

within the premises of the subscriber to 

the junction box – falls within the definition 

of cable home wiring. 

If the purpose of the FCC’s homerun 

wiring procedures is to allow a 

property owner to gain control over in- 

building cable wiring so as to make the 

wiring available to an alternative provider 

at the incumbent provider’s junction 

box, it appears that following the 

Sheetrock Order, the same result can be 

more economically achieved by use of 

the FCC’s rules for cable home wiring. 

To what extent do the three problems 

associated with use of the homerun 

wiring rules affect application of the 

cable home wiring rules? 

tIMe AnD COMPlexIty 

An MDU owner may invoke the FCC’s 

home-run wiring procedures to facilitate 

a competing video provider’s access to 

inside wiring at the incumbent’s junction 

box. This process can require three to 

four months’ time to complete, following 

the building owner’s delivery of initial 

notice to the incumbent cable provider, 

assuming that the incumbent cooperates. 

However, if the previous analysis is 

correct, application of the cable home 

wiring rules should (in theory) produce 

the same result – permitting access by 

an alternative video provider to existing 

inside wiring at an incumbent’s junction 

box – without comparable complications 

or delays. 

Under the unit-by-unit home-run 

wiring rules, a property owner must 

provide 60 days’ notice to an MSO before 

requiring the MSO to sell, remove 

or abandon home run wiring that extends 

from the junction box to the subscriber 

unit. However, under the cable 

home wiring rules, an alternative video 

provider has a right to access home wiring 

at the demarcation point seven days 

after the subscriber terminates cable service 

(assuming that the building owner 

consents and the subscriber wishes to 

switch video service providers) – and, 

according to the FCC’s Sheetrock Order, 

the demarcation point is located at 

the junction box. 

In other words, the cable home wiring 

rules, as modified by the Sheetrock 

Order, provide a much more efficient 

route to the same destination. 


MultIPle ServICeS 

As I discussed in the previous article, the 

application of home-run wiring rules to 

wiring used to deliver data or telephone 

services in addition to multichannel 

video programming is unclear. An incumbent 

may argue that its ongoing 

use of the wire to deliver data or VoIP 

signals to subscribers gives it a “legally 

enforceable right to maintain” that wire, 

thus creating uncertainty surrounding 

application of the FCC’s transitional 

procedure for home-run wiring. 

No such ambiguity exists in the language 

of the cable home wiring rule: An 

incumbent’s obligations – including the 

obligation to take affirmative steps to facilitate 

an alternative video provider’s access 

to wiring at the demarcation point – 

are triggered by the subscriber’s “voluntary 

termination of cable service.” 

Cable service is defined to mean the 

“one-way transmission to subscribers of 

video programming, or other programming 

service” 10 and does not include 

two-way transmissions such as Internet 

access service or telephone service. Because 

neither Internet access nor telephone 

service is a cable service, the application 

of 47 C.F.R. § 76.802 is not 

affected by the incumbent’s continued 

use of cable home wiring for the provision 

of either or both of those services. 

Therefore, an incumbent’s use of existing 

inside wiring for delivery of multiple 

services should not affect the application 

of the FCC’s cable home wiring 

rules. 

PreeMPtIOn OF WIrInG ruleS 

By COntrACt 

A final obstacle to use of the FCC’s 

home-run wiring procedures is the ease 

with which those procedures may be 

preempted by language contained in a 

contract between the incumbent provider 

and the property owner. It is not 

unusual for right-of-entry agreements 

written after 1997 to include provisions 

specifying that the disposition of inside 

wiring upon termination of the agreement 

is governed not by the FCC rules 

but by another procedure specified in 

the agreement. Because the home-run 

wiring rules are not intended to nullify 

contractual or other legal rights secured 

by state law, such provisions are enforce-

able. A property owner who signs such an agreement and later 

wishes to make the existing wiring available to an alternative 

provider may be unable to utilize the FCC procedures. 

In contrast with the home-run wiring rules, which regulate 

dealings between cable operators and MDU property owners, 

the FCC’s rules for cable home wiring are, in essence, consumer 

protection regulations intended to benefit cable subscribers. It 

is hard to see how a contract between a cable operator and an 

MDU property owner could impair rights guaranteed under 

federal law to a third party. 

For example, it is unlikely that a property owner and an 

incumbent cable operator could effectively contract to block 

application of the cable home wiring rules by designating a demarcation 

point inside the subscriber’s unit, by stipulating that 

the cable company need not offer to sell the home wiring to 

an MDU resident who voluntarily terminates the incumbent’s 

video programming service or by agreeing that the incumbent 

may maintain control over the wiring indefinitely after the termination 

of video service. 

On the other hand, a right-of-entry agreement can circumvent 

the cable home wiring rules by declaring that the wiring 

belongs to the property owner, who grants the incumbent the 

exclusive right to use the wiring. 47 C.F.R. § 76.801 specifies 

that the rules “do not apply where the cable home wiring … is 

considered to be a fixture by state or local law in the subscriber’s 

jurisdiction.” The FCC procedures, whether for home-run 

wiring or for cable home wiring, are not intended to affect the 

legal rights of property owners under existing state law. 

COnCluSIOn 

The difficulties surrounding use of the FCC’s procedures for 

gaining control over existing home-run wiring belonging to an 

incumbent cable operator may account for the apparent reluctance 

of MDU property owners to rely on those procedures. 

However, the FCC’s rules for cable home wiring as modified by 

the 2007 Sheetrock Order, as we interpret them, suggest that a 

property owner can use the cable home wiring rules to achieve 

the same result without most of the difficulties associated with 

the home-run wiring procedures. 

This is not to say that the FCC specifically intended its 

Sheetrock Order to produce the result outlined in this article 

or that a competitive strategy based on the analysis set forth 

in this article is without difficulties of its own. It suggests that 

such a strategy may be worth trying until the Commission 

undertakes the complicated task of unifying its inside-wiring 

rules or until those rules are rendered obsolete by further developments 

in wireless technology. BBP 

enDnOteS 

1 47 C.F.R. 76.800(d). 

2 47 C.F.R. 76.5(ll). 

3 47 C.F.R. § 76.802(a)(2). 

4 47 C.F.R. § 76.802(j). 

5 47 C.F.R. § 76.5(mm)(2). 

6 The Commission has described the cable demarcation point as “the point 

at which an alternative multichannel video programming distributor 

(MVPD) would attach its wiring to the subscriber’s wiring in order to 

provide service,” and as the location where “a competing provider may ac- 

the laW 

The FCC’s rules for cable home 

wiring are, in essence, consumer 

protection regulations intended to 

benefit cable subscribers. It is hard 

to see how a contract between a 

cable operator and an MDU owner 

could impair a third party’s rights. 

cess existing cable home wiring in an MDU building.” Report and Order 

and Declaratory Ruling (CS Docket No. 95-184, rel. June 8, 2007), 5. 

“Location of the demarcation point is significant because under our rules, 

the demarcation point is the place where competing providers may access 

existing home wiring in an MDU building.” First Order on Reconsideration 

and Second Report and Order (CS Docket No. 95-184, rel. Jan. 29, 

2003), 49. 

7 Report and Order and Declaratory Ruling (CS Docket No. 95-184, rel. 

June 8, 2007). 

8 First Order on Reconsideration and Second Report and Order (CS 

Docket No. 95-184, rel. Jan. 29, 2003). 

9 Id. at 51. 

10 47 C.F.R. § 76.5(ff). 


the laW 

FCC to Impose New 

Disability access rules 

On Service Providers 

New rules for making video, VoIP, messaging and videoconferencing 

services more accessible are now in development. Some of them seem 

likely to impose costs on service providers and equipment vendors. 

By Robert D. Primosch ■ Wilkinson Barker Knauer LLP 

Providers of video, voice and data 

services and their vendors should 

familiarize themselves with the 

FCC’s implementation of the Twenty- 

First Century Communications and 

Video Accessibility Act of 2010. The 

purpose of the new law is to provide 

people with disabilities, including those 

who have visual or hearing impairments, 

with improved access to modern communications 

services and technologies. 

The FCC must promulgate many 

rules to implement the new law, including 

the ones discussed below, beginning 

October 8, 2011, or shortly thereafter. 

Following is an overview of some of 

the more significant issues on which the 

FCC is currently seeking comment from 

industry and the public. Further details 

are available in the FCC Notices of Proposed 

Rulemaking shown below. 

vIDeO DeSCrIPtIOn 

The Act directs the FCC to reinstate and 

modify rules that require television stations 

and multichannel video programming 

distributors (MVPDs) to provide 

or pass through a minimum amount of 

video programming that includes video 

description, defined as “the insertion of 

audio narrated descriptions of a television 

program’s key visual elements into natural 

pauses in the program’s dialogue.” In 

effect, video description does for visually 

impaired subscribers what closed captioning 

does for those who are hearing 

impaired. A copy of the FCC’s Notice of 

Under proposed rules, video providers must 

pass through video descriptions for the visually 

impaired if they are technically capable of doing 

so. Technical capability hasn’t yet been defined. 

Proposed Rulemaking for this matter is 

available at http://tinyurl.com/5tyueaj. 

Comments and reply comments are due 

April 28 and May 27, respectively 

Under the reinstated rules, beginning 

January 1, 2012, all MVPDs generally 

would be required to pass through 

any video description when a broadcast 

station or nonbroadcast network provides 

it, if the MVPD has the technical 

capability necessary to do so on the 

channel over which it distributes the 

station or network in question. MVPDs 

with 50,000 or more subscribers would 

be required to provide 50 hours per calendar 

quarter of video-described primetime 

or children’s programming on each 

of the top five nonbroadcast networks 

that they carry. 


Robert Primosch is a partner at Wilkinson Barker Knauer LLP, a law firm in Washington, 

D.C., that specializes in telecommunications law. You can reach him at 

rprimosch@wbklaw.com. 


The FCC is examining, among 

other things, how it should determine 

whether an MVPD has the technical capability 

to pass through video description. 

For example, transmitting multiple 

audio tracks, even digitally, may 

require MVPDs to deploy equipment 

that they do not have in place today. 

At what point the costs of compliance 

should be considered high enough to 

render an MVPD technically incapable 

of complying with the rules has not yet 

been decided. 

In addition, the FCC has proposed 

to reinstate the process through which 

an otherwise technically capable MVPD 

may seek an exemption from the rules 

based on economic burden. Interested 

parties are asked to comment on the

economic costs of the pass-through requirement 

and on whether any considerations 

are unique to particular MVPD 

delivery technologies, such as IPTV. 

Finally, the Act requires the FCC to 

initiate a future inquiry into whether 

video description requirements are feasible 

for video programming distributed 

via the Internet. 

ADvAnCeD COMMunICAtIOnS 

ServICeS 

The Act also requires that advanced 

communications services (ACS) be accessible 

to persons with disabilities to the 

extent that accessibility is achievable. If 

accessibility is not achievable, then an 

entity covered by the Act must “ensure 

that its equipment or service is compatible 

with existing peripheral devices or 

specialized customer-premises equipment 

commonly used by individuals 

with disabilities to achieve access,” if that 

is achievable. 

In addition, each ACS provider “has 

the duty not to install network features, 

functions or capabilities that impede 

accessibility or usability.” The FCC’s 

Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on 

this matter is available at http://tinyurl. 

com/6dkfbrg. Comments and reply 

comments are due April 13 and May 13, 

respectively, and the FCC must finalize 

these rules by October 8, 2011. 

In this context, ACS is defined to 

include interconnected and noninterconnected 

VoIP service, electronic messaging 

service and interoperable videoconferencing 

service. The FCC proposes 

to define “disability” as a “physical or 

mental impairment that substantially 

limits one or more of the major life activities 

of an individual; a record of such 

an impairment; or being regarded as 

having such an impairment.” 

The FCC’s accessibility regulations 

for ACS will apply to any “manufacturer 

of equipment used for [ACS], including 

end user equipment, network equipment 

and software.” As to service providers, 

the FCC seeks comment on its 

proposal to apply the Act’s requirements 

to “all entities that make ACS available 

in interstate commerce, including resellers 

and aggregators.” The FCC also proposes 

to apply the Act to “entities that 

the laW 

Advanced communications services must now be 

accessible to persons with disabilities, if possible, 

but service providers have some flexibility 

in choosing how to do this. 

provide ACS over their own networks” 

and all entities that make ACS available 

in or affecting interstate commerce, 

including providers of applications or 

services that are accessed (that is, downloaded 

and run) by users over other service 

providers’ networks. 

The Act gives manufacturers and service 

providers some flexibility in choosing 

how they will make their products 

or services accessible. They may do so 

either by building accessibility features 

into the relevant equipment or service or 

“by relying on third-party applications, 

peripheral devices, software, hardware 

or customer-premises equipment that is 

available to consumers at nominal cost 

and that can be accessed by people with 

disabilities.” 

On the issue of achievability, the 

FCC proposes to consider only the factors 

set forth in the Act, which are 

• Nature and cost of steps needed to 

make a product or service accessible 

• Technical and economic impact 

• Type of operations (for example, 

the extent to which the FCC should 

consider an entity’s status as a new 

entrant in the ACS market and 

whether that entity has significant 

resources to devote to compliance 

with the Act’s requirements) 

• Industry flexibility (the FCC believes 

that it is “preclude[d] from preferring 

built-in accessibility over third-party 

accessibility solutions” but asks a variety 

of questions as to how it should 

determine whether a third-party solution 

complies with the Act, particularly 

as to cost, usability and documentation 

and support). 

The FCC’s rules also must provide 

that “[ACS], the equipment used for 

[ACS] and networks used to provide 

[such services] may not impair or impede 

the accessibility of information content 

when accessibility has been incorporated 

into that content for transmission 

through [such services, equipment or 

networks].” The FCC asks whether such 

rules should ensure that “the accessibility 

information (e.g., captions or descriptions) 

are not stripped off when information 

is transitioned from one medium 

to another”; “parallel and associated 

media channels are not disconnected or 

blocked”; and “consumers … have the 

ability to combine text, video and audio 

streaming from different origins.” 

The FCC asks how it should implement 

the Act’s record-keeping requirements, 

which are not insignificant. Beginning 

one year after the effective date 

of the FCC’s new rules, covered entities 

must maintain compliance records that 

include their efforts to consult with 

individuals who have disabilities, descriptions 

of the accessibility features of 

products and services, and information 

about whether products and services 

satisfy the Act’s compatibility requirements. 

Complaint-related records must 

be maintained as well. An officer must 

submit to the FCC an annual certification 

that records are being kept in accordance 

with the Act. 

Finally, the FCC seeks comment on 

what remedies and other sanctions it 

should consider when an entity violates 

the Act. The FCC states that it may issue 

an “order directing a manufacturer to 

bring its next generation or equipment 

or device, and a service provider to bring 

its service, into compliance within a reasonable 

period of time,” but that ordering 

any retrofitting of equipment would 

be an inappropriate remedy. 

Due to the upcoming statutory 

deadlines, both rule makings described 

above will be on a fast track. Interested 

parties therefore should be prepared 

to express their concerns to the FCC 

sooner rather than later. BBP 


inDuStry analySiS 

Consolidation in the 

telecommunications 

Industry 

Citing economies of scale, telcos have entered a period of rapid consolidation. 

What will this trend mean for you? 

By Jill Kasle ■ The George Washington University 

this is the story of how a momand-pop 

telephone company in 

Louisiana, founded some 30 years 

after AT&T was incorporated, grew big 

enough to merge with a gigantic telephone 

company that didn’t even exist 

when the AT&T divestiture case was 

filed – and what this all means for you. 

Since the beginning of the telecommunications 

business, there has always 

been a very large number of very small 

companies – the so-called “independent” 

telephone companies. These companies 

were so small (hundreds of subscribers 

instead of the tens of millions that the big 

companies had) and so nonoffensive (no 

insider trading charges, no antitrust violations) 

that they flew largely under the 

radar. Though these companies had to 

meet obligations imposed by state public 

utility commissions and, often, answer to 

local governing bodies, for the most part 

they were left alone. Even the Modified 

Final Judgment, the 1982 court order 

that broke up AT&T, said nothing about 

independent telephone companies. 

But some of these independent companies 

are ambitious – and one of the 

most ambitious is CenturyLink, a company 

based in Monroe, La., that has just 

merged with Qwest. 

CenturyLink’s beginnings are so 

homespun that if a movie had been 

made about the origins of the company, 

the part of CenturyLink’s founder 

would surely have been played by Jimmy 

Stewart. In 1921, a man named William 

The breakup of the old AT&T created 

opportunities for new competitors, which are now 

reassembling what was broken apart in 1984. 

Clarke Williams, a former manager of 

the Ozon Telephone Company in western 

Texas, accepted a job in the payroll 

department of Southern Bell in Monroe, 

La. Shortly thereafter, Williams married 

a woman named Marie Hill, a former 

teacher and operator for the Mertzon 

Telephone Company in Mertzon, Texas. 

In 1930, Mr. and Mrs. Williams 

purchased the Oak Ridge Telephone 

Company, which was located near Monroe, 

La., and served all of 75 customers. 

The Williamses’ front parlor became the 

company headquarters. Marie Williams, 

assisted by two young girls, switched 

calls around the clock except between 

the hours of 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. on Sunday, 

when the customers were at church 

and Sunday supper. Each month, Marie 

Williams wrote out the customers’ bills 

by hand, and the Williamses’ eight-year- 


old son, Clarke, delivered the bills on 

his bike. 

In 1946, Clarke Williams came home 

from serving in World War II and married 

Mary Kathryn Lee. His parents gave 

the Oak Ridge Telephone Company to 

the young couple as a wedding gift. 

For the next 50 years, Clarke Williams 

led the company on an acquisitions 

spree so extensive that by 2009 the 

company, now known as CenturyLink, 

had operations in 33 states and was the 

largest independent telephone company 

in the country and the fourth-largest (by 

access lines) telecommunications provider 

in the country. Then the economy 

tanked, credit dried up, and Century- 

Link’s executives retreated to their 

boardroom to ponder their next move. 

And what a move it turned out to be: 

the acquisition of Qwest, a multibillion- 


Jill Kasle is a law professor at The George Washington University. She was a member 

of the defendant’s trial team in United States v. AT&T and, with Professor Christopher 

H. Sterling, wrote “Decision to Divest,” a four-volume study of the divestiture 

case. You can reach her at kasle@gwu.edu.

dollar company that had acquired, 

among other things, U S West, a regional 

Bell operating company. 

As more and more customers turn to 

the Internet as their main form of communication, 

wireline companies such 

as CenturyLink and Qwest find themselves 

in an industry sector where the 

competition is heating up. By joining 

forces, wireline companies save money, 

gain clout and reduce their operating 

costs. The merger of CenturyLink and 

Qwest, a transaction valued at $25 billion, 

promises to be one of the biggest 

examples of the benefits of consolidation. 

The two companies have estimated 

that they will eventually save $625 million 

in yearly costs. 

CenturyLink and Qwest are by no 

means the only couple at this dance: 

AT&T just announced a deal, valued at 

$39 billion, to acquire T-Mobile, a transaction 

so enormous that it has the potential 

to reshape the telecommunications 

industry. 

Experience from the last century, 

Innovation for the next. 

We can Help! Suttle offers green-field 

solutions that give you a high quality, 

versatile, and easy to install system to 

organize and distribute communications 

throughout a home or apartment building, 

no matter the method of distribution. 

Need brown-feild solutions? Suttle offers 

retrofit answers such as our HomePNA 

coax ethernet adapters for simple bridging 

between points or our master and endpoints 

for full distribution of 

high band-with services. 

SOHO Access 

Enclosures 

& Modules 

HomePNA 

Adapters & Bridges 

inDuStry analySiS 

SpeedStar 

Connectors & Plates 

So what does all this mean to you? 

The answer, of course, depends on who 

the “you” is: 

• If you’re a customer, you might benefit 

from the oft-touted economies 

of scale that result from a consolidation; 

in other words, you might actually 

see lower prices. 

• If you’re a broadband consultant, 

economic development professional, 

or telecommunications lawyer, the 

news is definitely good: If the number 

and pace of consolidations really 

does increase, as forecasts suggest, 

there will be plenty of fee-based 

work to go around. 

• If you’re a real estate developer or city 

government official (or a consumer) 

hoping for better broadband in your 

development or city, the news is 

mixed. A consolidated company, especially 

in an area where scant competition 

exists, has little incentive to 

negotiate. 

• If you’re a lawyer at the Antitrust 

Division of the Justice Department 

or on the staff of the communications 

subcommittee of the Senate 

Committee on Commerce, Science, 

and Transportation, you’re keeping 

a close eye on things and wondering 

whether the telecommunications 

industry is going to return to 

the “Wild West” days of the 1990s, 

when everyone seemed bent on acquiring 

everyone else. 

• If you are the late Harold Greene, 

the no-nonsense judge who presided 

over the AT&T divestiture case and 

all but insisted on the breakup of 

the company on the grounds that 

telecommunications is not a natural 

monopoly and that the best and 

most cost-efficient service could be 

provided by a disaggregated telephone 

business, you just might be 

watching, from your seat in Heaven, 

as the telecommunications industry 

reassembles itself and wondering if, 

in fact, you were wrong. BBP 

1-800-852-8662 • www.suttleonline.com 


Broadband Properties’ list of independent 

telcos deploying or 

planning fiber to the premises 

has now grown to 576 – more than 12 

times the size of the first list the magazine 

compiled in 2005. That means 

about half the independent telcos in the 

United States now have at least some experience 

deploying fiber to the premises. 

inDepenDent telcoS 

FttH and Independent telcos 

Telcos are beginning to look beyond the triple play to new applications, 

such as meter reading and mobile backhaul. 


ABOut tHe lISt 

Since 2005, Broadband Properties has maintained a list of independent telephone companies that deploy fiber to the 

premises. We’ve published the list at least twice each year, and we also maintain it online at www.bbpmag.com/search. 

php to enable you to search, sort and download this information. The online list includes several other types of deployers 

in addition to independent telcos. 

Although we gather information from as many sources as we can, we know the list is not complete. To add to the 

list, fill in missing information or correct any errors, please contact masha@broadbandproperties.com. 

“I never want to dig up this town again,” said one 

independent telco general manager, explaining 

why he replaced deteriorated copper with fiber. 

FTTH has now become the default 

technology choice for telcos when they 

have to build new plant. Although not 

many have undertaken to replace their 

entire networks with fiber, telcos tend to 

choose future-proof fiber whenever they 

wire new subdivisions, replace deteriorated 

copper plant or overbuild other 

providers’ territories. “I never want to 

dig up this town again,” one general 

manager said, explaining that the fiber 

he was putting in the ground was likely 

to outlast his own career. 

Another reason for the growth of 

the list is the broadband stimulus pro- 

gram. The Rural Utilities Service (RUS) 

awarded $3.6 billion in broadband 

stimulus loans and grants, much of it 

for FTTH projects. Much of the RUS 

funding was awarded to independent 

telcos, largely because these companies 

are RUS’s traditional clients, and the 

agency was directed to give preference to 

companies it had worked with success- 

fully in the past. Many of these stimulus 

projects are now in progress. 

Additional drivers for independent 

telcos’ adoption of FTTH include 

• ongoing improvements in technology 

that have reduced the cost of 

deploying fiber 

• a tradition of commitment to local 


Masha Zager is the editor of Broadband Properties. You can reach her at masha@ 

broadbandproperties.com. 


economic development and quality 

of life 

• a desire to provide advanced services 

to both residential and business 

customers. 

Many, if not most, of the telcos on 

the list are in the midst of long-term fiber 

upgrades. After starting with trial 

deployments, they commit to building 

out fiber wherever they can make an economic 

case for it. 

In addition, early adopters of FTTH 

have continued to upgrade their fiber 

electronics. Though our list still shows 

some BPON technology, we suspect that 

most of it has been upgraded by now. 

By installing new electronics on existing 

networks, these telcos are demonstrating 

that FTTH is indeed future-proof. 

WHy BuIlD FIBer? 

Independents have told us they are 

building fiber networks because 

• their old copper plant was failing, 

and they didn’t want to replace it 

with more copper that would soon 

be obsolete

• they wanted to offer advanced services 

and decided that FTTH would 

allow them more options 

• their service areas were losing jobs 

and population, and they believed 

fiber would bring more economic 

opportunities 

• their service areas were growing rapidly, 

and new residents moving from 

metropolitan areas were attracted to 

fiber as an amenity 

• they determined that the capital cost 

of FTTH was comparable to that of 

copper, but fiber cost less to maintain 

and had a longer useful life 

• they saw opportunities to compete 

in areas where businesses and residents 

were seeking additional service 

choices, but incumbents were not 

upgrading their networks. 

Because independent telcos rarely 

compete with one another, they share 

experiences and pool information. As 

information spreads, one success gives 

rise to another – and over the last several 

years, with fiber deployment costs falling 

and the cost of copper rising, more 

and more independents have been encouraged 

to try out this technology. 

WHAt tHe nuMBerS SHOW 

1 Larger telcos are more likely to deploy 

FTTH only in greenfield developments; 

smaller telcos are more 

likely to overbuild their own or other 

telcos’ service areas with fiber. 


WhAt is An independent telcO? 

The companies that appear on this list are licensed providers of wireline voice services other than Verizon, AT&T and 

Qwest. They are regulated in the United States as ILECs (incumbent providers), CLECs (competitive providers) or both. 

The majority are rural providers, many of them cooperatives or small family-owned businesses that were set up 50 

or more years ago to offer telephone service in regions not covered by the Bell system. A smaller number came into 

existence after the Telecommunications Act of 1996, some specifically to build fiber-to-the-home networks in new 

housing developments and others to serve businesses or offer alternatives in underserved areas. Some cable operators 

also have CLEC certificates and are included on the list. 

Today, many non-telephone companies deliver voice services and are functionally equivalent to CLECs. Although 

the telco category is becoming less meaningful as a result, telcos still exist as a historical and legal category, and our 

definition is consistent with industry usage. 

As we went to press, the CenturyLink-Qwest merger had just been granted final approvals (see Consolidation in 

the Telecommunications Industry in this issue), so CenturyLink will not appear on this list in the future. 

To the extent possible, we have excluded from the list telcos whose only involvement with FTTH is to deliver services 

over fiber access networks that they do not own – for example, networks owned by municipalities or housing 

developers. 

Most of the largest telcos on our 

list – sometimes called Tier-2 telcos – 

including CenturyLink, Fairpoint, 

Frontier, TDS Telecom and Windstream, 

have greenfield-only fiber 

deployment policies. (There are occasional 

exceptions, such as TDS 

Telecom’s building of FTTH in 

response to municipal competition 

in Monticello, Minn. In addition, 

Frontier’s FTTH network, with 

500,000+ homes passed, was acquired 

from Verizon.) The large telcos 

that are overbuilding their own 

or others’ territories with fiber, such 

as SureWest and Cincinnati Bell, 

tend to be metropolitan rather than 

rural. 

In other words, most of the fiber- 

to-the-home upgrades outside metropolitan 

areas are being done by 

smaller, or Tier-3, telcos. Though 

some of these are pure CLECs, many 

are cooperatives and small family 

businesses that until recently never 

marketed their services proactively, 

let alone competed with other providers. 

When we speak with these 

companies, they consistently express 

surprise at the failure of their larger 

competitors to compete – and at how 

easy it is to cherry-pick profitable 

customers that larger companies are 

overlooking. 

2 Most independent telcos building fiber 

networks are incumbent providers 

or subsidiaries of incumbents. 

FTTH Network Builders by Type 

Pure CLECs 

14% 

ILECs and 

their CLEC 

subsidiaries 

86% 

About six out of seven independent telcos deploying FTTH are incumbents, though many are 

overbuilding nearby towns with fiber. 


Six out of seven companies on 

the list are ILECs (incumbent carriers 

dating from before 1996) that 

are either replacing old copper plant 

with fiber, building fiber to new developments 

in their service areas or 

overbuilding towns near their service 

areas where they have name recognition 

– or some combination of the 

three. In most states, they must form 

CLEC subsidiaries in order to move 

outside their traditional service areas, 

but we still list them as ILECs 

even if their fiber-to-the-home networks 

are only in their CLEC areas. 

The remaining companies are 

pure CLECs (competitive carriers), 

many of which have no traditional 

geographic base. These companies 

seek out promising territories to overbuild 

with fiber. A few of them build 

hybrid fiber-coax networks in some 

areas and FTTH networks in others. 

The proportion of ILECs to 

CLECs has remained surprisingly 

constant over the years that we have 

tracked telco fiber builds, even as the 

number of companies on the list increased 

by a factor of 12. 

Many of the pure CLECs originally 

collaborated with housing 

developers to build networks in 

greenfield developments and masterplanned 

communities, but after the 

housing market peaked, some turned 

to overbuilding. A few, such as Com- 

Span USA and Hiawatha Broadband, 

adopted an overbuilding model from 

the start. Others focus on serving 

small and midsize businesses. 

The typical independent telco 

serves a few thousand customers in 

one or two rural counties; however, 

the companies on this list range 

from corporate giants to tiny cooperatives 

that serve a few hundred 

customers. Likewise, their fiber 

deployments (not counting Frontier’s 

FiOS acquisition) range from 

SureWest’s 150,000 homes passed to 

pilot projects with fewer than a hundred 

homes passed. 

3 Though the triple play of voice, data 

and video services is still standard, 

additional services are becoming 

more common. 


Services Delivered or Planned on FTTH Networks 

Voice, Data, Video 

57% 

Other 

1% 

Many independent telcos manage 

cable TV networks alongside 

their telephone networks. Deploying 

fiber to the home allows them to 

merge the two networks, reducing 

operating costs while adding highdefinition 

TV, DVR, video on demand 

and a wider selection of channels. 

Telcos that don’t own cable TV 

plant throughout their service areas 

are losing landlines to cable companies 

and must usually offer video to 

compete with cable. Though they 

have the option of reselling satellite 

TV, they often prefer to operate their 

own networks, and they consider 

FTTH when they cannot reach all 

their customers with DSL. 

Beyond the triple play, the most 

Unknown 

18% 


Triple Play Plus 

Additional 

Services 

4% 

Voice, Data 

19% 

Voice, Data Plus 

Additional 

Services 

1% 

In residential areas, the triple play of voice, video and data continues to be the standard offering. 

GPON 

Active Ethernet 

Unknown/Undecided 

BPON 

EPON 

PON Unspecified 

RFoG 

7 

15 

FTTH Technology Used 

Note: Some telcos use multiple technologies. 

42 

36 

70 

144 

common residential services offered 

are security monitoring, gaming and 

home automation; business applications 

are also offered by telcos that 

have significant numbers of business 

customers. 

Two important new services for fiber 

networks are mobile backhaul and 

meter reading. In the last two years, 

as demand for mobile bandwidth has 

grown, fiber-based backhaul has become 

critical. FTTH equipment vendor 

Calix says hundreds of its telco 

customers now use FTTH technologies 

to serve wireless operators. A case 

study of an Alaskan telco is described 

in an article in this issue, Making the 

Most of a Fiber Network. Because 

deployments to cell towers rarely 

Passive optical networks are far more common than active networks, but active networks continue 

to gain in popularity. Many telcos deploy PON to residential customers and active Ethernet to 

business customers. 

Continued on Page 83 

392

Over the past decade, fiber optic cable, once used only for long-haul 

communications, has been extended all the way to end users’ premises. 

Today, fiber to the home (FTTH) is a mature, proven technology, and 

with costs that are comparable to and even below those of old copper 

technologies, it is certain to be the technology of choice for service 

providers moving forward. 

In the United States, FTTH is available to about one home in five. In 

countries such as Japan, Korea, Denmark and Sweden, the figure is closer 

to four out of five. Due to vast gains in available bandwidth, reliability and 

security – gains that spur economic growth and enable new services for 

telehealth, distance learning, cloud computing and more – these nations 

have committed to deploying fiber on a broad scale. 

In 2010 alone, fiber-fed home businesses sustained 700,000 jobs – 

mostly new jobs – in a poor U.S. economy. Fiber deployments stimulated 

investment and economic growth in communities across the country, 

and stimulus funding established the promise of further expansion in the 

coming years. 

The details are in this publication, which gives network builders, real 

estate developers and managers, and government officials an overview 

of the power of fiber optics and the benefits it delivers to communities. It 

makes the business and environmental case for fiber to the home, as well. 

For more information, please visit www.FTTHCouncil.org. 

We call fiber the Light Fantastic. When you’ve read this primer, you’ll 

see the light! 

Daniel O’Connell 

President 

FTTH Council North America 

2 | The Advantages of Optical Access | FTTH CounCil

Contents 

Reliability... Bandwidth... Affordability... Future-Proofing... Standards... 

Security... Economic Development... Sustainability... New Broadband 

Content & Services... Higher Revenue... 

Fiber to the Home: Pathway to Ultra-Broadband . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 

Fiber and Bandwidth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 

Applications for FTTH Providers: Beyond The Triple Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 

Fiber: The Light Fantastic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 

Telehealth: The Time is Now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 

FTTH Aids Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 

Builders, Real Estate Developers and FTTH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 

Questions Real Estate Developers Ask About FTTH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 

Beating the Recession with Fiber: Three Case Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 

Focus on Municipal Priorities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 

Key Questions Municipal Officials Ask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 

FTTH Success Stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 

Introducing 1 Gbps to the Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 

Understanding Fiber Network Architectures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 

FTTH Council Certification Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 

This primer was originally written by Steven S. Ross and updated by him and by Masha Zager, both of the Broadband Properties staff. It summarizes research commissioned 

by the FTTH Council as well as independent reporting by the authors and by BBP contributing editor Joe Bousquin. 

Local Economic Impact of FTTH Noted by 

FTTH Providers 

Large business development 

Work from home/SOHO expansion 

Business efficiency 

Rural growth/agricultural efficiency 

Quality of life (services, home education…) 

Construction stimulus 

Residential growth 

8% 

6% 

5% 

3% 

3% 

FTTH providers notice significant economic impacts borne by fiber; 42 percent specifically cited expansions or establishment of large businesses. 

Source: RVA LLC. 

22% 

42% 

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 

FTTH CounCil | The Advantages of Optical Access | 3

Fiber to the home: 

Pathway to Ultra-broadband 

Fiber to the home (FTTH) has become 

the leading technology for 

next-generation communications 

networks worldwide. On every 

continent, telecom providers are building 

FTTH networks to replace legacy 

copper networks that are running out 

of headroom to support the demand 

for communications services. Because 

governments view fiber as critical national 

infrastructure, many have developed 

national broadband plans to 

encourage the buildout of fiber. 

Already, fiber reaches at least 200 

million homes globally – a tenth of 

all the households in the world – and 

an estimated 62 million households 

subscribe to fiber-based services, including 

voice, video, data and more. 

In the United States, fiber reaches 20 

million homes; half of those now have 

direct fiber optic connections, as do 

17 million homes in Japan, more than 

12 million in Korea and 8 million more 

in Europe. These numbers continue 

to grow exponentially. China alone 

expects to have 100 million fiber subscribers 

by 2015. 

Providers and governments 

around the world all agree fiber to the 

home is the endgame for communications 

infrastructure. No alternative 

infrastructure is even a contender (al- 

4 | The Advantages of Optical Access | FTTH CounCil 

The number of Internet-connected devices in the home will grow from 2 billion today to 10 billion in 

2015, says Pyramid Research. Only FTTH can meet this demand for in-home bandwidth. 

though wireless networks are being 

integrated with FTTH – more on that 

later), and everyone agrees that fiber 

will meet the world’s needs for the 

foreseeable future. The only debates 

involve the speed of the transition. 

why Fiber? 

The reason for this striking degree of 

unanimity is simple: FTTH offers far 

more bandwidth, reliability, flexibility, 

security and longer economic life than 

alternative technologies, even though 

its price is comparable. It is also less expensive 

to operate and maintain than 

copper. 

Because of these advantages, FTTH 

can support many more communications 

services than legacy infrastructures, 

including newly emerging services 

such as health care and cloud 

computing. Fiber’s reliability and security 

are particularly critical for such 

new services as telehealth and tele- 

presence. 

FTTH also allows network operators 

to derive more revenues from today’s 

communications services. FTTH 

subscribers today often spend 30 to 

40 percent more per month than DSL 

subscribers – not because basic services 

are more expensive (they aren’t), 

but because more and better premium 

services are available. 

For example, multiple simultaneous 

HD channels are difficult to implement 

well over any medium but fiber; 

3D TV and high-definition video communications 

are even more challenging. 

At the end of 2010, Verizon, thanks 

to its all-fiber FiOS network, was within

Fiber duct being laid in Chennai, India. 

a few cents per month of the highest 

average monthly customer revenue of 

any large network provider on Earth. 

Because other media have inherently 

limited capacity, tweaking more 

bandwidth from them becomes increasingly 

difficult and expensive as 

time goes on. This isn’t true of optical 

fiber, whose capacity is effectively 

unlimited. 

Fiber can handle any bandwidth 

demand with ease. In fact, one bundle 

of fiber cable not much thicker than 

a pencil can carry all of the world’s 

current communications traffic. The 

technologies for transmitting data 

over fiber are well understood, and 

the upgrade path for the electronic 

components that send and receive 

signals has been defined for years into 

the future. If anything, increasing fiber 

bandwidth will become less expensive 

rather than more expensive. 

who’s bUilding Ftth? 

By our count, well over 700 network 

operators have already deployed FTTH 

in the United States. Even in a down 

economy, most developers put fiber 

into new properties and many are up- 

grading existing 

properties. Larger 

telcos are deploying 

fiber in cities 

and suburbs, and 

smaller telcos in 

rural areas. Cable 

providers use fiber 

to compete 

for lucrative commercial-services business. 

Even some small electric companies 

have extended the fiber networks 

they use to manage their own facilities 

to serve their customers as well. 

and municipal buildings. In 2010, when 

Google announced that it planned to 

build one or more community fiber 

networks, more than 1,100 local governments 

proposed their communities 

as suitable locations. (In March 2011, 

Google selected Kansas City, Kan., for 

its initial fiber deployment.) 

adding ValUe to 

ProPerties 

Access to utilities makes private property 

more valuable. A house is worth 

much more if it has access to a public 

Telepresence is one of the advanced applications that depends on a high-bandwidth, high-reliability 

network. In this photo, the people on the far side of the table are actually sitting in a remote office, 

but can interact with the local group as if they were physically present. 

Municipalities are attracted to 

FTTH because it positions their communities 

for tomorrow’s jobs and economic 

growth. Nearly 100 localities 

have built or are building fiber networks 

to serve residents or businesses; 

hundreds more have fiber to schools 

street, water and sewer services, public 

schools and other utilities than if it 

does not. In the same way, FTTH adds 

value to properties. Fiber connections 

make single-family homes easier to 

sell and multiple dwelling units easier 

to rent. Renters and buyers know they 

can get the most attractive services 

available on the market today – and 

that if an exciting new service is introduced 

in a few years, they’ll be prepared 

for that as well. 

This publication explores these issues, 

and more, in detail. It’s written in 

nontechnical language so you can understand 

the value of next-generation 

infrastructure – and what it means 

to you – without a degree in optical 

engineering. 

We want to communicate ... 

The Advantages of Fiber to the Home. 


Fiber and bandwidth 

Q: What is bandwidth? 

A: In a network, bandwidth (what 

engineers call bitrate) is the ability 

to carry information. The more 

bandwidth a network has, the 

more information it can carry in a 

given amount of time. Networks 

with high bandwidth also tend to 

be more reliable because fewer 

bottlenecks disturb the flow of 

information. 

Q: How much bandwidth – 

or information delivered by 

bandwidth – do we need? 

A: A standard-definition television 

signal requires a bandwidth of 

about 2 Mbps – two million bits (zeros 

and ones) per second. HDTV requires 

as little as 2.5 Mbps if the image 

is rather static – a person being 

interviewed, for instance. But fast 

action, such as in some sporting 

events, requires more – as much as 

8 Mbps, even with new compression 

technology such as MPEG-4. 

Now, full-frame 3D is hot. While it 

can be delivered at 2.5 to 3 Mbps, 

a high-quality experience requires 

closer to 5 Mbps. 3D immersive 

HDTV – a technology already being 

used in some academic and industrial 

settings – will require between 

50 and 300 Mbps. 

Q: What about data? 

A: Bandwidth requirements for many 

kinds of data are exploding. For 

example, the digital cameras that 

consumers buy can create larger 

and larger images. In health care, 

the medical images produced by 

equipment such as CT scanners are 

orders of magnitude larger than 

camera images – a hundred times 

larger, and more. 

The biggest growth in data transmission 

has been for video, and 

this trend is expected to continue 

at least for the rest of this decade. 

Video requires not only extra bandwidth 

but also extra reliability. The 

smallest delay in data transmission 

can result in distorted views. 


Q: Can’t copper carry high 

bandwidth? 

A: Yes, copper can support high 

bandwidth, but only for a few hundred 

yards. The longer the signal 

travels on copper, the lower the 

bandwidth. Optical fiber is unique 

in that it can carry high-bandwidth 

signals over enormous distances. 

Fiber uses laser light to carry signals. 

Under some circumstances, 

a signal can travel 40 miles (60 

kilometers) without degrading 

enough to keep it from being received. 

Another difference is that 

fiber is better able to support upstream 

bandwidth – that is, from 

the user out to the network. High 

upstream bandwidth is important 

for video communication and for 

many business applications. 

Q: What exactly makes fiber 

“future proof”? 

A: The equipment necessary to send 

light signals keeps getting better. 

So equipping an existing fiber network 

with newer electronics and 

with lasers that pulse light faster, or 

lasers using different wavelengths 

of light, can vastly increase available 

bandwidth without changing 

the fiber itself. The new electronics 

are very cheap compared with 

the original cost of laying the fiber. 

Therefore, once fiber has been 

deployed, network operators can 

keep increasing bandwidth at very 

little cost. 

Q: How long has fiber optic 

technology been in use? 

A: Fiber optic cable has actually been 

used in communications networks 

for more than 30 years. Fiber first 

delivered a signal directly to an 

American home (in Hunter’s Creek, 

Fla.) more than 20 years ago. Before 

that, fiber was – and still is – relied 

upon to carry communications 

traffic from city to city or country 

to country. The first trans-Atlantic 

fiber cable was laid in 1988. Almost 

every country on earth has some fi- 

ber, delivering services reliably and 

inexpensively. 

Q: All providers seem to claim they 

have fiber networks. What’s 

different about fiber to the home? 

A: Don’t be fooled! It is true that most 

cable and DSL networks use fiber. 

In these networks, the fiber carries 

the signal close enough to a home 

so that copper can carry it the rest 

of the way. However, this approach 

requires expensive, difficult-tomaintain 

electronics at the point 

where the fiber meets the copper. 

The available bandwidth is far 

less than an all-fiber network. And 

these halfway approaches do not 

allow symmetrical bandwidth – existing 

cable and DSL systems can 

download much faster than they 

can upload information. 

Q: Isn’t that good enough? 

A: That depends on what you want to 

use your bandwidth for. If all you 

want is to send emails, download 

songs or share family photos, the 

bandwidth provided by today’s 

cable modems and DSL lines may 

be good enough. If you want to log 

on to the corporate LAN from home 

and work effectively, you’ll need 

more. And what about uploading a 

high-def video of the school play, or 

sitting down to dinner with family 

members a thousand miles away? 

Q: Why does it matter how close 

to the home fiber comes in DSL 

and cable systems? 

A: With copper cable, there is a 

marked relationship between distance 

and available bandwidth. 

For example, the latest commercial 

versions of DSL can carry a signal of 

more than 200 Mbps for about 750 

feet. Over a distance of a mile, DSL 

can deliver only about 30 Mbps. 

That’s the theoretical limit. In practice, 

the real bandwidth is less. 

Q: With cable and DSL, there’s often 

a difference between advertised

and actual bandwidth. Is that 

true for fiber? 

A: Cable, DSL and even wireless networks 

are usually more heavily 

oversubscribed than fiber – that is, 

providers promise users more than 

the total amount of available band- 

(2011) 

1+ GbPS FIber Per 

USer, AND GroWING 

Today, fiber’s bandwidth 

is orders of magnitude 

bigger than other 

technologies. As the new 

generation of 10 Gbps 

equipment is deployed, 

the fiber circle will move 

off the page. 



(2011) 

Source: BBP LLC 

width because they know all users 

aren’t going full throttle most of 

the time. As a result, copper-based 

networks slow down during periods 

of heavy use – such as when 

teenagers come home from school. 

Fiber has enough bandwidth that 

VisUalizing Fiber-borne bandwidth 

Bandwidth 

Comparisons 

64 Kbps: Phone Line 

128 Kbps: ISDN 

1.5 Mbps for a T1 Line 

100 Mbps: DSL maximum per user 

with latest technology 

20 Mbps: Wireless maximum per 

user with latest technology 

160 Mbps: Cable maximum per user 

with latest technology 

providers can guarantee high 

speeds with little or no oversubscription. 

If a fiber network is designed 

properly, users will always 

get the speeds that are advertised. 

The Federal Communications Commission 

now insists that carriers deliver 

the bandwidth they advertise. 

Q: Is FTTH technology expensive? 

A: In new construction, fiber costs 

about the same as copper to build, 

and it costs much less to operate 

and maintain. Building fiber to 

the home is expensive only when 

compared with not building anything 

– that is, with adding new 

electronics to an existing copper 

network or building fiber only part 

of the way to the home. The problem 

is that these less-expensive 



(2011) 

Only the 

Beginning 

In a few years, even 

1 Gbps will look small. 

Soon, most content will be 3D 

and ultra-high-definition. 

FTTH CounCil | The Advantages of Optical Access | 7 



(2011)

solutions don’t always meet users’ 

needs. In the last few years, the 

flood of video content has outrun 

the ability of older technologies to 

handle bandwidth demands. Providers 

are shutting off or slowing 

Increased bandwidth lets us do familiar things faster. 

Send an email. View a website. But its real value is that it 

lets us do entirely new things with our computers, cameras, 

televisions – with our network. Today, the network is 

often called the “cloud,” which is a way of saying, “I don’t 

even have to think about where data is stored or where 

processing is happening.” 

Things we talk about in everyday conversation today 

would have been bewildering a decade ago. In the past 

few years, we have seen such dazzling innovations as 

• Tablet computers for easy access to games, ebooks, 

TV programs, email, shopping, banking and an everexpanding 

suite of new “apps.” 

• Smartphones that aren’t just for mobility anymore 

but are increasingly used for personal media consumption 

in the home. 

• Internet-connected televisions, radios, set-top 

boxes, Blu-ray Disc players, cameras and picture 

frames that receive or deliver movies, TV and photos 

via the Web. 

• Voice over Internet Protocol telephones that direct 

incoming callers to any line and take messages in text 

and video as well as voice. 

• Social media that keeps people continuously in touch 

and up to date – who needs phone calls anymore? 

• Two-way video communication whose quality is 

good enough to bring the illusion of “being there” 

to teleconferencing. It’s called “telepresence.” Highdefinition 

video communication has even reached 

the home market; telecommuting workers can send 

telepresence robots in their offices to sit in for them 

at meetings while they watch from their home TVs. 

• Easy distribution of user-created video that lets 

grandparents see children, musicians develop audiences 

and manufacturers demonstrate new products. 

• Digital media lockers that let consumers store music, 

TV, videos and services in the cloud and access 

them from many devices. 

• Telehealth devices and applications that bring 

medical services to remote areas and to the homebound 

elderly. 


down service or imposing prohibitive 

fees for customers who exceed 

monthly bandwidth caps. Customers 

don’t like these restrictions, 

and they don’t appreciate being 

called “bandwidth hogs” for using 

services they have paid for. In addition, 

it’s not clear that providers 

save money by failing to meet users’ 

needs, because limiting bandwidth 

means limiting revenue potential 

as well. 

the ineVitability oF bandwidth growth 

YouTube appeared in February 2005 and quickly became 

one of the five largest users of bandwidth on earth 

and the largest single user of Internet bandwidth. The 

social networking platform Facebook, the world’s most 

visited site, has more than 600 million active users who 

share photos and videos, play games and use half a million 

other embedded applications. 

The least expensive netbooks today come with 160 GB 

hard drives, because users need the file space. And if they 

need the file space, they also need to transmit large files 

and back them up online. Users become annoyed when 

network speeds lag behind local connection speeds – 

and USB transfer rates have now reached 5 Gbps. 

Internet-connected TV sets and set-top boxes let 

viewers watch high-definition online video on the big 

screen as easily as they can watch video from the local 

cable or phone company. Users don’t have to “think Internet” 

to put Internet video on the TV. They just check out 

what’s available, using their TV remotes. Internet-capable 

TV models are today’s standard offering. 

New services let people access health care and take 

classes from their homes. With home automation, residents 

can take care of their homes while they’re away, 

using Internet- connected security cameras and remote 

energy monitoring devices. 

Telecommuting and home-based businesses are 

on the rise, too. In October 2010, market researcher Michael 

Render reported that new businesses created by 

fiber-connected residential users had pumped more 

than $40 billion into the economy in just the previous 12 

months, the largest source of new jobs in 2010. Owners 

and managers of multifamily communities are turning 

social rooms into fiber-connected business centers and 

concierge offices. 

We have every reason to believe that innovation will 

continue, that bandwidth needs will keep on growing – 

and that only fiber to the home, with its superior reliability 

and plentiful upstream capacity, will be able to keep 

delivering the bandwidth we need.

aPPliCations For Ftth 

ProViders: beyond the triple Play 

a 

decade ago, cable companies 

introduced the triple play of 

voice, video and data that has 

now become the standard telecom offering 

worldwide. But fiber’s greater 

bandwidth and reliability gives FTTH 

providers the option to think beyond 

the triple play and offer multiplay services 

tailored to the needs of particular 

communities. 

Fortunately, new broadband applications 

become available every day, 

and many of them create opportunities 

for use or resale by fiber providers. 

These new applications fall into several 

categories. Some help differentiate 

fiber-to-the-home communities; 

some generate additional revenue 

streams for providers or help retain 

customers; still others can be used by 

providers or property developers to 

manage their assets more efficiently. 

Many do all three. 

diFFerentiating 

a CommUnity 

Fiber has become the norm in new developments, 

especially in new masterplanned 

communities, according to 

market researcher Mike Render. In order 

to further differentiate their communities, 

developers are now seeking 

applications to leverage their fiber 

infrastructure. 

Telehealth gives residents instant 

access to medical specialists via 

videoconferencing from the home, 

the fitness center or the community 

room. The videoconferencing may 

be integrated with Internet-enabled 

diagnostic devices (blood pressure 

cuffs, respiration measurement, etc.), 

electronic medical records systems, 

online prescription services and online 

appointment scheduling. Telehealth 

helps keep older adults living 

independently longer, and it is a boon 

for members of the “sandwich generation,” 

who are responsible for caring 

for both their children and their elders. 

Social applications use the fiber 

infrastructure to build a sense of 

community. They range from social 

networking sites focused on the community, 

to intranet sites featuring local 

news and events, to Web-based 

or IPTV video channels broadcasting 

local athletic contests, artistic productions 

and political discussions. 

Because these offerings can be interactive, 

they easily trump conventional 

“public access” stations on cable. 

Home-automation and concierge 

services, such as Verizon 

Concierge, take advantage of the fiber 

network within a community to 

make residents’ lives comfortable and 

convenient. Cameras that recognize 

residents’ cars entering the community 

can alert parking attendants and 

security personnel and then turn on 

lights and heating or air conditioning 

at home. Residents can connect with 

Online face-to-face healthcare 

Very large HDD with super resolution 

One device for TV, Internet, & phone 

Advanced online shopping 

Two-way video calling 

Remote home and pet monitoring 

Advanced websites/full video 

Business video conferencing 

3D TV 

Advanced online college 

one click to community services or 

schedule a dry-cleaning pickup, pizza 

delivery or home repair. These applications 

can also help owners control 

energy use. 

Mobility is easier to accommodate 

with a robust fiber-to-the-home network. 

Using the backhaul afforded by 

FTTH, providers can offer Wi-Fi connections 

to residents in indoor and 

outdoor public spaces throughout a 

community. Residents can bring their 

laptops or tablets to the pool, check 

email from the laundry room or listen 

to Internet radios in the gym. 

generating new 

reVenUe streams 

Customers have become used to purchasing 

such over-the-top Internet 

Interest in Futuristic Services 

Current FTTH Users Over Age 55 

17% 

16% 

31% 

30% 

27% 

26% 

25% 

23% 

36% 

35% 

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 

Older FTTH customers put online face-to-face health care above other video services, but one in six 

say they’d also use FTTH for online courses. Source: RVA LLC. 

Very large HDD with super resolution 

Business video conferencing 

Advanced websites/full video 

Remote home and pet monitoring 

Advanced online shopping 

Online face-to-face healthcare 

One device for TV, Internet, & phone 

Two-way video calling 

Advanced online college 

3D TV 

Interest in Futuristic Services 

Current FTTH Users Under Age 40 

33% 

52% 

52% 

50% 

49% 

47% 

47% 

46% 

42% 

41% 

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 

Video applications are pacing broadband use by FTTH customers under age 40. Source: RVA LLC. 


services as Skype or Netflix, but often 

they’re happier to deal directly with 

network providers they know and trust. 

Broadband providers of all kinds now 

offer a variety of applications to their 

customers through Web portals or 

through set-top boxes, often at lower 

prices than the customers could obtain 

by purchasing these services directly. 

These applications reduce customer 

churn; they lower expenses by 

keeping more traffic in-network; and 

they create new revenue streams. Because 

fiber-to-the-home networks 

have virtually unlimited capacity and 

unparalleled reliability and remote 

service monitoring, fiber providers 

have a far wider choice of applications 

for resale. 

online storage allows users to 

store their data files on the Internet, 

access them from anywhere and share 

them with others. Indeed, the cloud 

computing revolution has moved applications 

from the desktop to the 

Web. Service providers are now supplying 

the types of services to business 

customers that until recently were provided 

by corporate IT departments. 

Home security, like many other 

technologies, is migrating from analog 

to digital. Digitally based home 

security allows residents to control 

settings, receive alerts and view their 

homes via the Internet or cell phone. 

Digital security systems also support a 

wider range of sensors – not only traditional 

motion detectors but cameras, 


Fiber-connected cameras can be used for community 

security applications. 

water detectors, smoke detectors and 

many others. Because digital security 

uses wiring that is already installed for 

broadband, it is inexpensive to install 

and makes economic sense for renters 

as well as homeowners. 

over-the-Top Video may be offered 

as either an adjunct to or a substitute 

for a pay-TV offering, and it may be 

delivered either through a provider’s 

Web portal or via a specialized set-top 

box or a hybrid set-top box. The business 

models, technologies and even 

legal status of provider-delivered OTT 

video are evolving rapidly – a fact that 

demonstrates the enormous amount of 

interest in this application. If OTT video 

eventually displaces the traditional pay- 

TV model, fiber-to-the-home providers 

are well-positioned to benefit from this 

change because they can guarantee 

the quality of user experience. 

Videoconferencing or video chat 

is universally available through free or 

low-cost Web-based services, but it is 

cumbersome and the quality is often 

poor. Fiber to the home, with its high 

upstream bandwidth, presents opportunities 

for providers to make highquality 

videoconferencing avail able, 

Rural telco BEK brings local sports events to its video customers; this is the mobile studio. 

and several such services have been 

introduced in the past year. 

FTTH providers are generating 

new revenue streams not only from 

residential and business customers 

but also from advertisers, utilities and 

wireless providers. 

Targeted advertising sold to 

advertisers represents an important 

potential revenue stream. One mechanism 

is through IPTV, which lets providers 

insert ads based on nearly any 

criteria. IPTV ads can be sent to households 

with certain demographic criteria, 

or to households (or even individual 

TV sets) with certain viewing patterns. 

Another potential source of advertising 

dollars is t-commerce, in which 

television viewers click the remote on 

an ad – or even a product placement 

in a television show – to either see 

more information about the product 

or actually to order it. 

Automated meter reading is usually 

the first smart-grid application that 

utilities deploy because it is relatively 

straightforward to implement and has 

an immediate payback. Though most 

fiber deployers that have installed 

smart meters on FTTH networks are either 

public or cooperative electric utilities, 

a few telcos are installing and reading 

smart meters and charging utilities 

on a per-reading basis. 

Beyond automated meter reading, 

such smart-grid applications as demand-response 

programs, SCADA and 

outage investigation greatly reduce 

electric utilities’ operating costs. Smartgrid 

applications are major reasons 

that electric utilities across the country 

are now building fiber infrastructures. 

The federal government’s stimulus 

programs have subsidized smart-grid 

upgrades and coordinated FTTH with 

smart-grid initiatives. 

Mobile backhaul has become an 

enormous revenue opportunity for 

fiber deployers. The exploding demands 

for mobile bandwidth have 

made clear to wireless providers that 

they must upgrade the connections 

from their cell sites to the Internet

(traditional connections are copper 

T1 lines with 1.5 Mbps bandwidth). 

FTTH deployers are already beginning 

to run fiber to the busiest cell sites – 

about one cell site in five is now served 

by fiber. In addition, the next generation 

of wireless architecture will move 

all baseband processing from cell sites 

to the cloud; cell sites will have to be 

connected via fiber to hubs where 

processing takes place. 

ProPerty management 

Broadband enables property owners 

to control their properties and assets 

more efficiently than ever before. The 

addition of broadband – especially the 

high-capacity, high-reliability broadband 

that fiber enables – turns “smart” 

buildings into “genius” buildings, 

according to one expert. Internet- 

enabled sensors and applications automate 

work that was once done by 

maintenance crews – and get it done 

it more quickly and accurately. Broadband 

applications also help own- 

Remote music lessons. 

Electric meter set up to transmit smart-grid information. 

ers communicate with tenants and 

employees. 

Guarding construction sites can 

be managed through IP-based video 

surveillance. Asset tagging, typically 

with inexpensive RFID, helps prevent 

theft or misplacement of equipment, 

and tags worn by employees help make 

sure people are where they’re authorized 

to be. Videoconferencing allows 

construction managers to make virtual 

site inspections more frequently than 

they can make physical inspections. 

online work order scheduling 

helps property managers be more responsive 

to their residents while reducing 

operating expenses. Residents can 

request repairs at any time – not just 

when the office is open or they can find 

the super – and management personnel 

can deal with problems that require 

personal attention rather than routine 

requests. Residents can be automatically 

notified when work is completed. 

energy management and water 

management can be broadband-enabled. 

Motion sensors, 

intelligent thermostats 

and automated ventilation 

equipment can 

keep public spaces and 

unoccupied units at appropriate 

temperatures; 

applications that monitor 

and analyze usage 

help property managers 

and residents find opportunities 

to shift loads 

to nonpeak times and reduce 

their overall usage. 

Join the FTTH Council 

Isn’t it time you enjoyed the benefits of 

FTTH Council membership? The Council offers 

several membership categories, with dues starting 

at only $395/year for organizations and as 

little as $50/year for individuals. 

We are: 

n Independent telecom providers from across 

North America that are future-proofing their 

networks by upgrading to FTTH. 

n Competitive broadband providers that are differentiating 

their offerings with all-fiber connectivity. 

n A wide variety of FTTH equipment manufacturers 

and other broadband solutions providers 

showcasing their latest products. 

n Engineering, outside-plant, consulting and 

construction firms that work with telecom service 

providers to design and deploy North America’s 

next-generation networks. 

n Municipalities and electric utilities that operate 

all-fiber networks as a way of enhancing 

prospects for local economic development. 

n Educational institutions, students and individuals 

interested in learning more about all-fiber 

networks and their role in communities’ economic 

growth and competitiveness. 

n Industry and professional groups whose 

missions are enhanced by the availability of 

ultra-broadband networks. 

Our areas of focus include: 

n Building a legislative and regulatory framework 

for advancing FTTH deployments. 

n Educating policymakers and the public about the 

benefits of FTTH. 

n Sharing information and best practices concerning: 

‑ Emerging optical access technologies and 

FTTH industry trends. 

‑ All-fiber network design, operations and 

optimization. 

‑ Fiber-to-the-home business planning and 

marketing strategies. 

‑ Smart-grid and green technology evolution. 

‑ High-bandwidth consumer applications, 

content and in-home networking. 

For more information, please consult the 

membership section of the FTTH Council website, 

www.ftthcouncil.org, or email 

secretariat@ftthcouncil.org. 


Fiber: 

the light FantastiC 

Unlike copper cable, which carries 

low-voltage electrical signals, 

fiber optic cable carries 

information by transmitting pulses of 

light. The pulses are turned on and off 

very, very quickly. Multiple streams of 

information are carried on the same fiber 

at the same time by using multiple 

wavelengths – colors – of light. 

The pulses of light are usually created 

by lasers. (Some short-range fiber 

systems use LEDs.) The equipment 

that transmits signals keeps getting 

faster and cheaper, so the same old 

fiber can be used to carry ever more 

information. New equipment is just 

slipped in. 

Fiber has many advantages over 

copper wire or coaxial cable, as it is 

easier to maintain and delivers far 

more bandwidth. Three of the biggest 

advantages are these: 

1Signals travel long distances 

inside fiber cable without 

degradation – 50 miles or 

more in some real-world 

networks and 65 miles or more in the 

laboratory. By contrast, bandwidth 

decreases in copper wire or coax as 

the distance traveled increases. Short 

lengths of coax, for instance – the 

lengths typically found in a small 

building – can carry 1 Gbps if the coax 

network is well designed. That’s 500 

times more bandwidth than typical 

broadband services using DSL over 

copper wire, and 200 times more than 

typical broadband over cable TV coax. 

But those speeds are impossible over 

longer distances. 

The closer fiber gets to a building, 

the shorter the copper loop and therefore 

the faster the service that can be 

made available to the building’s residents 

and businesses. Fiber all the way 

to the living unit can deliver virtually 

unlimited speeds. 

2Fiber cable is thin. Individual 

fibers can, in fact, be made 

thinner than a human hair. 

Thin fibers can be carried on 

a narrow ribbon or inside a microduct 


of hollow plastic typically less than 1/8 

inch in diameter. One typical fiber cable 

configuration with about 200 super- 

thin strands is about the thickness of a 

standard coax cable. 

That fiber cable could theoretically 

carry enough bandwidth to handle all 

18 

16 

14 

12 

10 

8 

6 

4 

2 

0 

5 

4.5 

4 

3.5 

3 

2.5 

2 

1.5 

1 

0.5 

0 

FTTH 

Cable Modem 

DSL 

the information being sent on earth at 

any one time today. The bottom line: 

Fiber can be hidden easily on the surfaces 

of walls in old construction. It is 

also flexible and rugged. In 2007, many 

vendors introduced inexpensive fiber 

that is tough enough to be stapled to 

Comparative Bitrate in Mbps, 

Downloads 

2007 2008 2009 2010 

Comparative Bitrate in Mbps, 

Uploads 

2007 2008 2009 2010 

Even in today’s deployments, which often do not exploit the full potential of fiber, FTTH has a sizable, 

and growing, downstream bitrate advantage over cable and DSL. The advantage of fiber is 

even more apparent on the upstream side – on average, FTTH connections have more than three 

times the upstream speed of cable or DSL connections. Source: RVA LLC. 

(DSL and cable data for 2007–8 not available.)

Average Number of Times Modem 

Rebooting Necessary Per Month 

Wireless 

Cable Modem 

FTTN 

DSL 

FTTH 

walls by installers and flexible enough 

to be bent around sharp corners. 

Though such fiber had been available 

for years, in the past it had been difficult 

and expensive to manufacture. 

Optical fibers made of polymers (plastics) 

rather than glass are now starting 

to be deployed for indoor networks. 

These cables are easy to install and 

close to invisible. 

3Once installed, fiber is upgraded 

by changing the 

electronics that create and 

receive the light pulses, not 

by replacing the cable itself. Fiber cable 

deployed in the access network is 

considerably longer lived than copper. 

It has a recommended depreciation life 

of 20 to 25 years, according to consulting 

company Technology 

Futures Inc. in a study 

commissioned by several 

Tier 1 telephone companies. 

The actual physical 

life expectancy of fiber is 

even longer; its economic 

life is limited by the prospect 

of competition. 

4Fiber networks 

are far less 

expensive to 

maintain and 

operate than copper networks. 

The fiber is amazingly 

reliable. Nothing 

hurts it except a physical 

cut or the destruction of 

the building it is in. Passive 

optical networks, 

or PONs, are the most 

1.5 

2.5 

2.4 

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 

Another measure of FTTH reliability: Customers report only about 1.5 reboots necessary per month 

– better than twice the reliability of cable. Source: RVA LLC. 

3.4 

4.9 

common type of fiber network. They 

use a minimum of electronics. In fact, 

there are no electronics at all between 

the provider’s central office and users. 

This improves network reliability and 

cuts deployment costs. But optical 

networks that do require electronics 

in the field have some advantages as 

well, especially when a network is built 

to carry content from multiple providers 

on the same fiber. Either way, the 

amount of power needed to run a fiber 

network is far less than that needed to 

run a coax or other copper network. 

This aids reliability and contributes to 

sustainability as well. 

Very Satisfied with Specific Internet 

Aspects, FTTH Versus Cable Modem 

Provider’s customer service 

Consistency of speed 

Installation process 

Broadband speed 

Reliability – service uptime 

43% 

58% 

42% 

61% 

52% 

63% 

46% 

64% 

49% 

69% 

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 

Telcos generally outperform cable operators on service, but telcos offering FTTH widen the gap even 

further. Source: RVA LLC. 

Most Important Advantages of FTTH 

As Reported by Customers 

Speed/ faster/ better Internet/ bandwidth 

Picture clarity/ video clarity 

Reliability/consistency/ no hassles 

Bundle of several services on one bill 

Cost 

Quality 

Fewer weather disruptions 

Number of channels/ entertainment choice 

Better customer service 

General positives - pleased to have it 

DVR 

Convenience 

Other 

Better than previous cable company 

Video-on-demand/ movie downloads 

No satellite dish 

Better technology/ up to date 

Lines are buried/ not overhead 

Easy installation 

Can run two computers at once 

20.2% 

15.8% 

10.7% 

9.8% 

5.8% 

5.8% 

5.4% 

5.2% 

3.0% 

2.7% 

2.5% 

2.3% 

1.4% 

1.1% 

1.0% 

0.8% 

0.6% 

0.5% 

0.5% 

44.8% 

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50% 

Bandwidth and reliability were cited most often by customers as FTTH advantages. Source: RVA LLC 


telehealth: 

the time is now 

Fiber’s bandwidth, reliability, 

safety and security have made 

it the technology of choice for 

in-hospital networks, and health care 

providers increasingly depend on fiber 

for exchanging huge image files 

and even for remote consultations 

and surgery. Until recently, regulatory 

requirements have limited the opportunities 

for using broadband to substitute 

live-at-home options for costly 

nursing home care. A recent study in 

Philadelphia, however, suggests that 

these savings are too large to ignore. 

Moreover, the situation studied could 

be copied by many local network providers 

under current regulations. 

NewCourtland, a senior services 

provider in Philadelphia, operates the 

LIFE program, modeled on the Medicare/Medicaid 

Program of All-Inclusive 

Care for the Elderly (PACE) initiative. 

PACE serves individuals who are 


hoUsing with teChnology 

saVes mediCal Costs 

Number of patients 33 in 26 housing units or rooms 

Annual technology cost $39,000 

Annual home care cost $249,600 

Total nursing home cost avoided $2,135,250 

Annual savings $1,846,650 

age 55 or older, certified by their state 

to need nursing home care, able to live 

safely in the community at the time of 

enrollment and in a PACE service area. 

A total of 75 providers in 29 states have 

received Medicare and Medicaid waivers 

to operate PACE programs. 

Although all PACE participants are 

certified to need nursing home care, 

the program keeps 93 percent of participants 

living safely in the community. 

PACE providers deliver all needed 

medical and supportive services, including 

adult day care, medical care, 

drugs, social services, medical specialists, 

and hospital and nursing home 

care when they become necessary. 

By employing remote monitoring 

technology, NewCourtland enabled 

33 residents to move from traditional 

nursing home care, realizing an annual 

savings of more than $1.8 million. Essentially, 

the technology helped substitute 

a $125 per month technology 

Become a CFHP! 

Certified Fiber to the Home Professional Program 

The rapid growth in FTTH is creating significant demand for technical staff 

trained in FTTH technology and installation techniques. Many service providers 

are struggling to find enough trained staff. In response to this need, the FTTH 

Council has embarked on a training and certification program in cooperation 

with professional training organizations, educational institutions and other 

third-party training programs offered by major vendors and service providers. 

This program benefits the fiber industry and develops in-demand job skills 

for people dislocated during the current recession. 

Certification as a CFHP indicates a professional level of technical competence 

in fiber-to-the-home technologies. Certification requires demonstrating 

knowledge of and familiarity with FTTH architecture, network design, 

deployment technology and operational skills, not a specific vendor’s products. 

Candidates for CFHP certification include management and supervisory 

staff, technical support managers and administrators, design specialists, 

telephony and network engineers and administrators, and advanced network 

engineers and administrators. Individuals participating in or graduating from 

community and technical college programs in telecommunications can also be 

candidates even if they have little or no experience in telecommunications. 

The Council recommends participating in a training course before taking the 

certification exam. The current CFHP course consists of two days of classroom 

instruction and is structured to provide competence in overall FTTH theory, 

terminology, topology, equipment and system cost estimation. 

CFHP COURSE DATES for 2011 

Dallas, TX (at the Broadband Summit) • April 28 - 29, 2011 

Spartanburg, SC • June 1 - 2, 2011 

St. Louis, MO • June 9 - 10, 2011 

Seattle, WA • July 6 - 7, 2011 

Minneapolis, MN • September 7 - 8, 2011 

Orlando, FL (at the FTTH Conference) • September 26 - 27, 2011 

Austin, TX • December 8 - 9, 2011 

The first two-day CFHP training course has been developed by 

The Light Brigade with assistance from FTTH Council member companies 

and organizations. For more information, go to www.lightbrigade.com. 

After completing the course, candidates can take the online examination 

to confirm certification on the FTTH Council’s website. Those who successfully 

demonstrate knowledge of the course matter through this online examination 

by achieving a passing percentage of 80 percent or higher will receive the CFHP 

designation and a certification diploma valid for three years. The CFHP exam 

and certification fee is $150 for the three-year period. After that time, another 

exam will be required to maintain certification. For further information, please 

contact cfhpinfo@ftthcouncil.org.

cost per person for $225 per day in 

nursing home costs, starting in 2008. 

Seven of the patients were in a group 

home, and 26 lived separately. 

Instead of staffing the patients’ 

homes with live-in help, NewCourtland 

installed a Healthsense eNeighbor 

system that includes sensors 

placed around the home, biometric 

devices as appropriate, medication 

dispensing, and a check-in button in 

each person’s home. A problem or unwarranted 

change brings a call from 

the monitoring center and, if necessary, 

a response from nearby staff. In 

a group home, there is one caregiver, 

supplemented with regular extra support 

mornings and evenings. 

“Keeping even one person out of 

Ftth aids 

sUstainability 

For service providers concerned 

about the impact of 

their networks on the environment, 

there’s good news about 

fiber. The environmental impact 

of FTTH is more positive than that 

of traditional copper networks, 

according to a Pricewaterhouse- 

Coopers study commissioned by the 

FTTH Council and released in October 

2008. 

Even with conservative assumptions 

about take rates, the greenhouse 

gases produced in manufacturing 

equipment and deploying networks 

are far lower for fiber than for copper 

networks and are outweighed in 

about five years by the savings from 

increased telecommuting alone. Telecommuting 

saves more than triple the 

amount of greenhouse gases released 

by powering the network. 

That’s an annual carbon-reduction 

dividend of close to 20 percent. Other 

environmental impacts are recouped 

with fiber in time periods ranging 

“Keeping even one person out of the hospital can 

pay for all systems for a PACE program for a year. 

The individuals we helped were motivated to leave 

a nursing home and move into the community, 

making an extra effort to participate in rehab.” 

the hospital can pay for all systems for 

a PACE program for a year,” said Jim 

Reilly, Director of Courtland Health 

Technology. “And more important, the 

individuals we helped were motivated 

to leave a nursing home and move 

into the community, making the extra 

effort to participate in rehab.” 

from one to six years, according to the 

report, which examined an “average” 

American FTTH deployment. The impact 

of any actual network would be 

slightly different from the typical case 

that was studied. 

Earlier studies have shown smaller 

annual savings, but almost all studies 

show a positive impact. Savings on 

gasoline (both for commutes avoided 

and for commuters who now enjoy 

less congestion on the highways) are 

partially offset by extra electricity use 

at home and by the power used to run 

the networks. 

Savings are likely to increase in 

the future as the uses of broadband 

networks expand. For example, PricewaterhouseCoopers 

did not consider 

other energy-saving applications, 

such as: 

• Telepresence, which is beginning 

to replace a significant amount of 

business travel; 

• Cloud computing, which enables 

Inside the patient’s living unit, all 

the equipment is connected by Wi-Fi 

to a network gateway. Fiber providers, 

whose networks rarely suffer outages 

that require on-premises gateway resets, 

have a huge advantage over DSL 

or cable providers in supporting programs 

like this one. 

data centers to be located near 

sources of renewable energy; 

• Smart-grid applications, which 

make electricity generation and 

distribution far more efficient; or 

• Distance learning, which reduces 

travel for educational purposes. 

About three-quarters of greenhouse 

gas emissions in the network life 

cycle come from the manufacture of 

active network equipment, Pricewaterhouse 

Coopers found. The researchers 

also examined how FTTH deployment 

affected such environmental issues as 

resource depletion, air acidification, 

algae growth in the oceans and the 

release of toxins into the environment. 

By every measure, FTTH had a beneficial 

environmental impact. A more 

complete presentation of the report’s 

results can be found at http://www. 

ftthcouncil.org/en/knowledge-center/ 

documents-of-interest-to/ftth-equipment-vendor/environmental-benefits-of-ftth-deplo. 


Uilders, real estate 

deVeloPers and Ftth 

Virtually all large developers 

of single-family homes and 

many developers of multifamily 

communities add FTTH to new 

properties. Many are working on retrofitting 

older properties as well. Retrofit 

work has expanded as new-home 

sales have fallen in the recession. 

Before the housing boom ended, 

Michael Render of RVA LLC estimated, 

on the basis of surveying home buyers 

and developers, that FTTH added about 

$5,000 to the price of a home. The size 

of the increase is less certain now, but it 

is clear that FTTH homes sell faster. 

By mid-2006, FTTH was economically 

viable in new developments with 

as few as 80 MDU living units or 100 

single-family homes. That number has 

21,000,000 

16,000,000 

11,000,000 

6,000,000 

1,000,000 

-4,000,000 

19,400 

Developer With 

Competitive Overbuilder 

Incumbent Rural 

Telephone Company 

Competitive Overbuilder 

(Rural or Suburban) 

Municipality or Public Utility 

District Acting as Retail Provider 

Competitive 

Overbuilder (Urban) 

Regional Bell Operating 

Company (within MSA) 

Municipality or Public Utility 

District Acting as Wholesaler 

35,700 110,000 

72,100 180,300 189,000 


continued to fall due to improvements 

in deployment technology. As fiber 

and fiber deployment costs have fallen 

FTTH Homes Passed, March 2011 

(Cumulative, North America) 

970,000 1,619,500 

6,099,000 

3,625,000 4,089,000 

2,696,846 

Major Categories of Fiber-to-the-Home Deployers 

And Take Rates, Winter 2010 

25.0% 

32.0% 

30.0% 

44.0% 

42.0% 

8,003,000 

11,763,000 

58.0% 

9,552,300 

85.5% 

Source: RVA LLC 

18,249,900 

17,227,000 

15,170,900 

13,825,000 

and copper costs have increased, fiber 

has achieved cost parity with copper 

in most new construction. 

20,914,476 

19,966,200 

Sep-01 Mar-02 Sep-02 Mar-03 Sep-03 Mar-04 Sep-04 Mar-05 Sep-05 Mar-06 Sep-06 Mar-07 Sep-07 Mar-08 Sep-08 Mar-09 Sep-09 Mar-10 Sep-10 Mar-11 


For single-family homes, 

customer-premises equipment 

is typically located outdoors. 


FTTH is now available 

to almost one out of 

five American homes. 

In the six months between 

September 

2010 and March 2011, 

an additional 948,000 

homes were passed 

by fiber despite the 

recession and the 

worst winter weather 

in a decade. That’s 

below the previous 

6 months but in line 

with the same period 

a year earlier.

There is a wide range 

of devices for placing 

fiber underground. 

7,500,000 

7,000,000 

6,500,000 

6,000,000 

5,500,000 

5,000,000 

4,500,000 

4,000,000 

3,500,000 

3,000,000 

2,500,000 

2,000,000 

1,500,000 

1,000,000 

500,000 

- 

5,500 

10,350 

22,500 

38,000 

20,000,000 

18,000,000 

19,400 

35,700 

72,100 

110,000 

FTTH Homes Marketed, March 2011 


180,300 

189,000 

413,221 

16,992,600 

18,167,300 

19,344,791 

16,000,000 

14,000,000 

13,875,600 

16,048,500 

12,000,000 

12,369,000 

10,000,000 

10,082,065 

8,000,000 

7,996,400 

6,643,000 

6,000,000 

5,079,999 

4,000,000 

3,218,600 

2,000,000 

1,754,300 

0 

829,700 

Sep-01 Mar-02Sep-02 Mar-03Sep-03 Mar-04Sep-04 Mar-05Sep-05 Mar-06Sep-06 Mar-07Sep-07 Mar-08Sep-08 Mar-09Sep-09 Mar-10Sep-10 Mar-11 


The number of homes marketed for FTTH rose by almost 1.2 million from September 2010 to March 2011, a gain slightly 

above the previous six months and well above the year-earlier period. The latest six-month increase was far below the 

2.2 million record logged for March 2009 to September 2009, but it shows a clear turnaround. 

FTTH Homes Connected, March 2011 


64,700 

78,000 

146,500 

213,000 

312,700 

548,000 

1,478,597 

1,011,000 

671,000 

3,760,000 

2,142,000 

2,912,500 

6,452,300 

5,804,800 

5,275,000 

4,422,000 

7,094,800 

Sep-01 Mar-02 Sep-02 Mar-03 Sep-03 Mar-04 Sep-04 Mar-05 Sep-05 Mar-06 Sep-06 Mar-07 Sep-07 Mar-08 Sep-08 Mar-09 Sep-09 Mar-10 Sep-10 Mar-11 


FTTH connections are rising. The number of homes connected rose by 647,500 from September 2010 to March 2011, faster than in 

the same period a year ago, while the ratio of homes connected to homes passed remained steady at a record 32 percent, up from 

29 percent two years ago. The number of new connections, 647,500, is higher than the total of 529,800 a year earlier but well below 

the record 853,000 of March 2009 to September 2009. 

Percent of US Households Passed and Connected to FTTH, 

2006 - 2011 (RVA LLC data) 

20% 

18% 

16% 

Passed 

14% 

12% 

Connected 

10% 

8.1% 

8% 

6.8% 

6% 

3.5% 

4% 

5.3% 

2% 

0% 

0.6% 0.9% 1.3% 

1.8% 

9.9% 

2.5% 

11.9% 

Mar-06 Sep-06 Mar-07 Sep-07 Mar-08 Sep-08 Mar-09 Sep-09 Mar-10 Aug-10 Feb-11 

More than 18 percent of all homes in the U.S. were passed by fiber by March 2011, making FTTH technology a major player in 

broadband and video services. More than 6 percent of all U.S. households were actually connected to FTTH. 

3.2% 

13.0% 

3.8% 

15.1% 

4.6% 

15.7% 

17.3% 

18.2% 

FTTH CounCil | The Advantages of Optical Access | 17 

5.0% 

5.6% 

6.2%

QUestions real estate 

deVeloPers ask aboUt Ftth 

Q: How can I justify adding to the 

price of a home in a weak market? 

A: The data are clear: Homes sell for 

higher prices when they are wired 

for high bandwidth and provide 

access to fiber. What’s more, FTTH 

homes sell faster than non-FTTH 

homes in the same market. In good 

times, this may translate into a 

greater profit, but it’s even more 

important in bad times. If few 

homes are being sold, you can bet 

that homes with high-bandwidth 

amenities will sell faster. This is 

equally true for rental properties: 

Developers of multiple-dwelling 

unit communities say their new 

buildings lease up faster if they can 

advertise them as fiber-connected. 

Q: Do I need to hire an engineering 

firm to design the installation? 

A: Fiber does need to be engineered 

in large apartment complexes – 

that’s true for coax, too. But smaller 

installations, as with smaller corporate 

LANs, do not need that kind of 

sophistication to work well. Greater 

standardization, clever new systems 

from equipment vendors, 

fiber that can be stapled and bent 

tightly around corners, the growth 

of distributor-supplied design help 

Fiber can now be bent tightly around corners. 

All customers have FTTH 

Very likely 

Somewhat likely 

Somewhat unlikely 

Very unlikely 


Likelihood of Adding FTTH Lines, 

Current Non-RBOC FTTH Providers 

2% 

4% 

9% 

15% 

and an expanding corps of qualified 

technicians have made lessformal 

design regimes feasible in 

the last few years. 

Q: Do I have to worry about other 

labor on my construction site 

damaging the fiber cable? 

A: Optical fiber is very, very thin – 

thinner than a human hair. But 

fiber vendors have developed 

many techniques to protect the 

fibers from harm. Cable can be armored 

to ward off cuts. Contractors 

can route inexpensive microduct 

– hollow 

plastic tubes 

typically threeeighths 

of an 

inch in diam- 

70% 

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 


eter – through walls before the 

walls are closed in with drywall or 

other materials. The microducts 

are easily repairable. After everything 

else is done, thin fiber can 

be “blown” through the microduct 

for hundreds of feet. New fiber can 

be bent almost like copper. Some 

vendors offer fiber in thin adhesive 

tape that can be rolled onto walls. 

Q: Do any building codes pertain to 

fiber? The stuff seems inert. 

A: Yes, all the regular fire and lifesafety 

issues apply. For instance, 

just as copper with PVC sheathing 

Thinner, more bend-tolerant fiber also allows more compact fittings, 

like this box. That makes installation easier in older structures.

Fiber networks are easy to test; the testing 

device often pinpoints the exact location of a problem. 

would be considered a life-safety hazard because of the 

combustion products released when it burns, so would 

various plastics used in fiber that is meant for outside 

installation. Indoors, look for Low Smoke Zero Halogen 

(LSZH) cables. If you are using thin plastic microduct that 

fiber can later be blown through, it should be labeled 

Halogen-Free Flame Retardant. You use a simple junction 

box to change from “outside” to “inside” wiring, just 

as you might with electrical cables. 

Of course, you should check with your local building 

code inspector. Aside from fire issues, codes may govern 

where fiber optical network terminals (ONTs – the boxes 

that convert pulses of light from the fiber into electrical 

signals for the computer or TV) may be placed on the outside 

walls or in common areas. A few municipalities specify 

where in the home the network connections should 

be placed. 

Q: Where should we put users’ network connections, 

assuming there is no specific building code or 

guidance document covering that subject? 

A: You should expect users to desire broadband connections 

in virtually any room in the house – bedrooms, 

office-dens, the kitchen. That’s because Internet connections 

these days accommodate telephones, televisions, 

set-top boxes, digital picture frames, security sensors, fire 

and smoke monitors and, of course, computers. As the 

“Internet of things” develops, more and more appliances 

will be Internet-enabled. 

Because portable consumer electronics devices, such 

as smartphones and tablets, in addition to appliances, increasingly 

communicate with the Internet via Wi-Fi (appliance 

manufacturers have now adopted a standard for 

building Wi-Fi into major appliances), you will also need 

a wireless gateway. Such gateways are offered by all vendors 

as standard-issue, to be used on the home side of 

fiber network deployments. 

ComPonents oF a 

Fiber-to-the-home network 

Most of the devices in FTTH networks convert electrical 

signals that travel along wires to pulses of light that 

travel on fiber, and back again. Let’s start at the beginning 

of a fiber network. 

olt stands For 

oPtiCal line terminal. 

The OLT puts the pulses on the fiber in the first place. 

Because most of them are located in telephone exchanges 

and other network central offices, residents 

and property owners rarely see them. 

onts are oPtiCal 

network terminals. 

These are the devices at the consumer end that turn 

light pulses back into electrical signals. They are sometimes 

called ONUs, for optical network units. In networks 

built by cable companies they may be called 

micronodes. Customer devices, such as computers, 

usually expect Ethernet – a standard networking technology. 

Your computers and home wireless system use 

Ethernet and probably have Ethernet connectors built 

in. A typical ONT turns the light pulses into Ethernet 

signals. 

In the United States, ONTs are typically placed in 

cigar-box sized enclosures on the outside walls of 

houses or apartments. But they can be made smaller 

than a deck of cards and can be placed inside customer 

premises as well. 

Fiber ConneCtiVity 

You’ll also hear about the point of presence, or POP. 

That’s the point at which the signals from multiple customers 

join the rest of the extended network. 

Pedestals and larger fiber distribution hubs are enclosures. 

They can hold beam splitters that take the 

signal from a single fiber and divide it (typically between 

8:1 and 32:1 but as much as 128:1) among fibers 

that go to individual dwelling units. 

Pedestals and hubs can be below ground, above 

ground (they often look like short posts or squat, airconditioner-size 

boxes) or attached to buildings. Connections 

and splits can also be made in boxes that are 

hung under roof eaves, in attics or basements, on telephone 

poles, or on what look like power lines or phone 

lines. For best reliability, many contractors bring two 

fibers into each dwelling unit from the pedestal. The fiber 

leading from a hub or pedestal to a user’s premises 

is called the drop cable. 


Q: In single-family homes, I often 

see ONT boxes hung on the 

outside walls. Can they also be 

placed indoors? 

A: Yes. In harsh climates, where heat 

or heavy snow could affect the outside 

installation, you will probably 

want to put ONTs indoors. Outdoor 

ONT models are sometimes placed 

in garages or utility rooms; you can 

also buy small, portable indoor 

models that are more like cable or 

DSL modems, and connect them 


with tough, flexible fiber that can 

be laid anywhere. Indoor ONTs, 

Pathways for structured wiring can 

be created before walls are finished. 

Modular ONT can be customer-installed. 

which are popular with apartment 

dwellers, can be designed to be 

user-installed. 

Q: Why do ONTs require backup batteries? 

A: Optical fiber cannot conduct electricity. 

Thus, to keep a network connection 

running during a power 

outage, you need a battery at the 

user premises or a fiber cable that 

includes a thin copper conductor 

connected to an off-site battery. 

This requirement may change as 

cellular phones replace landlines 

– a change that has already taken 

place in most of Europe. In North 

America, where most customers 

still have landlines, many standard 

designs are available for in-wall, 

between-stud boxes that hold the 

battery, ONT and fiber connections. 

Q: Does every dwelling unit or 

office need its own ONT located 

at the unit? 

A: No. Separate ONTs for each unit in 

a multiple-dwelling-unit building 

can be located centrally, often in 

a basement or an equipment cabinet. 

There are also ONTs designed 

to serve multiple units, typically 4 

or 8. This flexibility is made possible 

by new, smaller, low-power 

circuitry and by the fact that some 

ONTs can deliver 1 Gbps or more 

– enough bandwidth to share 

among multiple customers. 

Q: Is lightning a problem with fiber? 

A: No. In fact, because fiber does 

not conduct electricity, lightning 

strikes do not affect fiber at all.

eating the reCession 

with Fiber: three Case stUdies 

mdU in lexington, ky 

When Ball Homes of Lexington, Ky., 

started building Forty 57, a 360-unit 

luxury apartment community just 

southeast of downtown Lexington 

and the University of Kentucky, it 

needed an edge for today and the future. 

With the first units coming online 

in May 2009, the developer was not 

only leasing a greenfield development 

in the midst of the Great Recession but 

also offering a higher-end product for 

a sophisticated demographic at a time 

when doubling and tripling up had 

suddenly come back into vogue. 

To add value to its offering and 

ensure that the community stayed 

on the cutting edge of technology 

for the foreseeable future, Ball Homes 

partnered with Little Rock, Ark.-based 

Windstream Communications. After 

negotiating a bulk subscription deal 

for residents, Windstream deployed a 

GPON fiber-to-the-unit network at the 

community to light up a triple-play offering 

of voice, video and data, including 

dedicated 911 connectivity. Now, 

for $89 a month, residents can enjoy 

a take-if-you-want base programming 

package that includes 12 Mbps data 

speeds; 60 channels of DISH Network 

programming, including HBO; and in- 

coming terrestrial phone service plus 

911 over traditional phone lines. It is 

the first fiber-to-the-unit MDU in the 

Lexington market. 

Although Ball Homes thought 

an optional amenity would be more 

palatable during tight times, Windstream 

saw nearly a 100 percent take 

rate from residents who moved into 

the first phase of the project, and occupancy 

was 75 percent after nine 

months. Why? Forty 57 has amenities 

that go beyond the pool, gym and 

community lounge. 

“By going with fiber, we’re at the 

top of the game here locally while 

future-proofing the property for the 

foreseeable future,” says Brandon Buffin, 

Ball Homes’ IT director. “It’s been 

quite a positive.” 

mgm CityCenter 

las Vegas 

Imagine that you’ve just arrived at a hotel. 

As you walk into your room, a bellhop 

greets you by name, switches on 

the lights, puts some music on the stereo 

and draws the curtains to reveal a 

spectacular view. The bellhop asks you 

for precise instructions about how you 

would like the room to be lit, heated 


and shaded; what your tastes are in 

music and video; what time you would 

like to wake up – and, by the way, can 

we send up anything for dinner? 

Now imagine that all these things 

happen as if by magic, with no hotel 

employee in sight. Guests at the ARIA 

Resort and Casino and the Mandarin 

Oriental, the two hotels in Las Vegas’ 

new CityCenter, are treated to this kind 

of personalized automation based on 

technology from Control4. 

CityCenter, a joint venture between 

MGM Resorts International and 

Dubai’s Infinity World Development 

Corp. is a 67-acre complex on the Las 

Vegas Strip that is still under development. 

CityCenter is billed as the 

world’s largest private green development, 

with all its buildings receiving 

LEED Gold certification. 

Guests can use remote controls 

and bedside panels to control their environments 

and save their chosen settings. 

They can select scenes such as 

“good night,” which turns off the lights 

and TV, shuts the curtains and turns on 

privacy notification. Wake-up scenes 

awaken guests in a “subtle and more 

soothing way” by gradually changing 

temperature, lighting, curtain opening 

and music volume. 

Televisions in guest rooms also 

serve as giant computer monitors; as 

screens for game consoles, cameras 

and MP3 players; and as communications 

centers that display everything 

from voice mails to package deliveries. 

Because all the devices in the room 

communicate automatically with the 

hotel system, guests don’t have to 

complain about the remote’s needing 

new batteries or the mini bar’s needing 

replenishment. The system does 

the complaining for them before the 

guests become aware that anything is 

lacking. 

Of course, it goes without saying 

that CityCenter guests have access to 

plenty of wireless Internet bandwidth 

and to many HD TV channels. The resulting 

solution not only provides a 

“Wow!” experience for guests but also 


helps the hotels reduce energy costs 

and improve their operations (and, of 

course, call attention to their green 

status). Probably the biggest saving 

comes from being able to easily 

change climate-control settings, close 

the shades and turn off the lights in 

unoccupied rooms. 

CityCenter’s room automation is 

supported by an extremely robust IP 

infrastructure. MGM Resorts ran fiber 

to every guest room with 1 Gbps bandwidth. 

The network was designed to 

minimize the number of communications 

closets on guest floors, leaving 

more space for guest rooms. City- 

Center distributes voice, video and 

data over the IP network, and its internal 

building systems use the same 

network for communications. MGM 

Resorts expects the infrastructure to 

have plenty of capacity for additional 

applications for many years to come. 

In the CityCenter room-automation 

system, as in Control4’ s residential 

solutions, ZigBee sensors attached 

to devices such as light switches, dimmers 

and keypads communicate wire- 

lessly with a Control4 control unit in 

each guest room. The control units, in 

turn, communicate over the fiber network 

with a centralized server, which 

enables building staff to manage the 

entire system remotely. 

Control4 now has more than 10,000 

guest rooms deployed. It estimates 

that, depending on a hotel’s location, 

its energy efficiency and how it implements 

the Control4 solution, the payback 

period is between two and five 

years. Focusing on energy management 

alone, the payback is less than 

two years. 

Control4 has generalized the hospitality 

solution for use in other types 

of multifamily communities, such as 

condominiums and traditional neighborhood 

developments, where developers 

want to use technology for both 

lifestyle enhancement and sustainability. 

saCramento rental 

For Trammell Crow’s Steve Hester, just 

getting the Alexan Midtown project 

up and running was a Herculean task. 

In 2007, while his team was planning

the 275-unit mid-rise on the edge of Sacramento’s hip Midtown 

area, the wheels started coming off capital market 

financing. Originally, Trammell Crow had envisioned the 

project as a condominium whose units would be marketed 

to young professionals working in Sacramento’s health and 

government sectors, but it had to modify that plan quickly 

as lenders began to balk. 

The company thought the project still made sense as a 

rental. The site is located in Sacramento’s “medical triangle,” 

within easy biking distance of three major hospitals, including 

the UC Davis Medical Center, and just a few minutes 

from the California State Capitol and myriad state government 

offices and agencies. 

There was only one catch: Given Sacramento’s starring 

role in the housing debacle, with the area routinely ranking 

near the top of foreclosure statistics nationally, the rental 

market was flooded with houses that otherwise would have 

been for sale. That, in turn, put pressure on apartment rents. 

For the Alexan Midtown to compete, it would need to offer 

residents more for their money, including state-of-the-art 

technology that would appeal to the young medical and government 

professionals that were still its target market. That 

was especially true because of the Midtown price point – 

studios were advertised for just under $1,400 a month, more 

than double the rent of other entry-level digs in the area. 

One differentiator materialized by chance. Because the 

aesthetics of the project called for existing overhead cables 

to be buried underground, Hester got to work contacting 

the owners of those cables. One happened to be Roseville, 

Calif.-based SureWest, an independent ILEC that has been 

aggressively rolling out IP-based services in Northern California. 

SureWest started offering IP-based HDTV as early as 

2006 in the greater Sacramento area and already had a fiber 

ring running right past the Alexan site. 

“I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and that almost never 

happens, where there’s actually existing fiber fronting the 

property,” Hester says. “If it does happen, you usually can’t 

tap into it because it’s for 911 or a hospital or someone else’s 

dedicated use. But in this case, we had SureWest right there, 

and they were only too happy to serve the property.” 

Because the property already had fiber running literally 

to its door, the developer decided to make an investment 

for the future and take the fiber path all the way to all units. 

Now, residents can choose data speeds up to 50 Mbps. “Oftentimes, 

people talk about having a fiber network. But 

I think … that term has gotten watered down, just as the 

term ‘organic’ has been overused in the food industry. Nobody 

knows what it means anymore,” Hester says. “But at 

the Alexan, we have the real deal. This is a pure fiber system. 

As far as we can tell, no one else in the market can say that.” 

The project has been a success for SureWest, which has 

signed up 55 percent of the project’s tenants. And it has 

been a success for Trammel-Crow as well. 

Ftth Versus other 

types of Fiber networks 

In 2006, the FTTH Councils for Europe, Asia and North 

America standardized the definitions for fiber to the 

home and fiber to the building (also called fiber to the 

basement). They are: 

Fiber to the home (Ftth) 

A fiber optic communications path that extends from 

an operator’s switching equipment to at least the 

boundary of a home living space or business office 

space. The definition excludes architectures in which 

the optical fiber terminates before reaching either a 

home living space or business office space and the access 

path continues over a physical medium other than 

optical fiber. 

Fiber to the bUilding (Fttb) 

A fiber optic communications path that extends from 

an operator’s switching equipment to at least the 

boundary of a private property enclosing homes or 

businesses. The optical fiber terminates before reaching 

home living spaces or business office spaces. The 

access path then continues over another access medium 

– such as copper or wireless – to subscribers. 

Other definitions are not standardized but are commonly 

used by people in the industry: 

Fiber to the node or Fiber to 

the neighborhood (Fttn) 

FTTN is not defined by the FTTH Councils. In general, it 

refers to a system in which fiber is extended to a streetside 

or on-pole cabinet within 1,000 to 5,000 feet of 

the average user. From there, copper or wireless serves 

users, typically through a variant of DSL (Digital Subscriber 

Line). 

FTTN should not be confused with hybrid fibercoax 

(HFC), an architecture used mainly by cable companies 

to implement DOCSIS, the standard that allows 

data to be transmitted over cable TV systems. In a typical 

HFC system, fiber runs to each DOCSIS node and 

coaxial cable running from the node serves between 

100 and 500 users. Nor should FTTN be confused with 

RFoG, an FTTH technology that uses the signal protocols 

developed for DOCSIS. With RFoG, each user gets 

its own DOCSIS micronode. 

Fiber to the CUrb (FttC) 

Similar to FTTN, except that the fiber is brought much 

closer to user premises – typically closer than 1,000 

feet and often closer than 300 feet. FTTC installations 

may use either VDSL or Ethernet (over copper cable or 

wireless) to bring the signal from the fiber termination 

point to the user. Point-to-point wireless is sometimes 

(and rarely) used in rural areas simply to bring a signal 

from the roadway to a home that could be a mile or 

more away. 


FoCUs on mUniCiPal 

Priorities 

by the end of 2011, the economic 

stimulus program will 

have increased the number 

of municipal fiber networks to nearly 

100 and expanded several existing 

networks. The business case for others 

has improved thanks to “middle mile” 

Q: How can I determine whether 

my community is underserved? 

Residents complain about lack 

of bandwidth, and real estate 

agents say property values are 

suffering, but most residents 

have some broadband access and 

the incumbent operators plan to 

upgrade in a few years to DOCSIS 

3.0 and fiber to the node. 

A: It sounds as though these upgrades 

will be installed just as broadband 

needs will increase beyond what 

DOCSIS can easily deliver and what 

FTTN can deliver at all. Be sure to 

take the needs of the business 

community into consideration 

in addition to those of residents. 

Many economic development officials 

believe 1 Gbps access is 

needed to lure new businesses to a 

town. Also, the Commerce Department’s 

national map of broadband 

accessibility says DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades 

are possible for only 82 percent 

of the nation’s homes, at most. 

The shortfalls tend to be in smaller 

communities. 

Q: Can a fiber network help bring 

new business into my community? 

A: There’s quite a bit of evidence 

that fiber connectivity encourages 

businesses to stay, allows them to 

grow and attracts new businesses, 

particularly in high-tech industries. 

FTTH also facilitates home-based 

start-up businesses. Of course, it’s 


fiber also funded by the stimulus. And 

then there is Google’s plan for partnering 

with municipalities on 1 Gbps 

fiber, starting in Kansas City, Kan. 

All this activity has made municipal 

officials keenly aware of the potential 

for using ultra-broadband to promote 

key QUestions mUniCiPal 

oFFiCials ask 

only one component of an overall 

economic development strategy. 

Q: Don’t DOCSIS 3.0 and FTTN both 

use fiber? 

A: They use fiber, but usually not all the 

way to the home. The last 1,000 to 

5,000 feet from the fiber’s endpoint 

to the home is copper – coaxial cable 

in the case of DOCSIS, plain copper 

wire for FTTN. That limits bandwidth, 

reliability and versatility. 

However, you should check 

with the cable company to find out 

whether its DOCSIS 3.0 upgrade 

will make use of one of the new 

FTTH transitional technologies – 

RFoG (for Radio Frequency, or RF, 

over Glass) or DPoE (for DOCSIS 

Provisioning of EPON). These standards 

are more compatible with 

existing cable networks than “conventional” 

FTTH but can bring fiber 

directly to the premises, so they are 

gaining interest from cable companies. 

They can eventually be converted 

to conventional FTTH, too. 

Q: My town’s residents are just like 

others in the region, and maybe 

have even slightly higher incomes. 

Why don’t the phone and 

cable companies consider them 

attractive customers for FTTH? 

A: Many cable companies, telephone 

companies and independent broadband 

providers are now installing 

FTTH. But the companies operating 

economic development and enhance 

the quality of life in their communities. 

But they still need answers to 

many questions, for example about 

technology choices and private-sector 

partnerships. 

in your town may have prioritized 

other service areas that offer them 

more geographical or demographic 

advantages. Or, they may not have 

access to the capital needed upfront 

to expand their services. 

Q: The telephone company that 

operates here is installing FTTH 

in the new development just 10 

miles up the road. Why not here? 

A: It is usually easier to install fiber in 

new developments than in existing 

ones. The fiber goes into the same 

trenches that have to be dug anyway 

for water, electricity and sewer 

service. In fact, copper wiring usually 

can’t be run that way, so fiber 

is usually cheaper. Also, the new 

residents are not already tied to a 

cable or phone provider, so whoever 

installs a FTTH network in a 

new community has an easier time 

signing up customers. 

That’s why most new, large 

housing developments are being 

equipped with fiber. 

Q: Would installing fiber require 

that my streets be dug up? 

A: It depends. Many network builders 

in North America use aerial fiber 

installed on poles along with existing 

telephone, electric and cable 

wiring. Where trenching is impractical, 

contractors can often use horizontal 

drilling or pull fiber through 

existing ducts, water pipes, sewers

and gas lines rather than digging 

up streets and sidewalks. In addition, 

many cities already have usable 

fiber under their streets – fiber 

that is not being used to its limit. 

Finally, when there is no good alternative 

to trenching, new microtrenching 

techniques may allow it 

to be done with less disruption to 

traffic. A deep groove is cut quickly 

into the pavement with a large circular 

saw on wheels, and fiber is 

laid into the groove. 

Q: What might I do to get fiber to 

my residents without building my 

own network? My town has too 

much debt now to borrow more, 

and we have no experience 

operating a municipal utility. 

A: You might try lobbying the incumbents 

– the cable and telephone 

companies serving your town now. 

You could offer such incentives as 

a reduced franchise fee, access to 

public property or an accelerated 

permitting process. If you own an 

institutional fiber ring connecting 

municipal buildings, schools 

Distribution box for fiber lashed to existing aerial 

cable; this method is quick and inexpensive. 

and libraries, you might be able to 

propose “fiber swaps.” In addition, 

some communities launch educational 

campaigns about the value 

of FTTH and encourage residents 

to commit to taking fiber services if 

and when a provider offers them. 

You might also invite outside 

companies to consider bringing 

FTTH to your residents and offer 

the same kinds of incentives described 

above. Or you could enter 

into a public-private partnership 

to build a fiber network jointly 

with a private partner. In Europe, 

such partnerships are common, 

especially for large projects such as 

those bringing fiber to all homes in 

Amsterdam and Vienna. 

In the last few years, this approach 

has begun to gain traction 

in the United States, with a 

variety of different arrangements 

between the public and private 

parties being used. In fact, when 

Google proposed in 2010 to build 

an FTTH network in one or more 

American communities, more than 

1,100 communities responded with 

proposals for how they could work 

together with the company. 

Q: Is it better for the same company 

to run the network and provide 

services, or should we consider 

an open-access network with 

multiple providers? 

A: There is no clear answer. Openaccess 

networks, where the network 

builder (either a municipal 

or a private entity) “rents” bandwidth 

to a potentially unlimited 

number of content providers, are 

more common in Europe and Asia 

than in the United States. But they 

have worked here as well. At present, 

open-access networks in the 

United States tend to be either 

Pulaski Electric System, a municipal electric utility in Pulaski, Tenn., uses its FTTH network to operate a smart electric grid and deliver triple-play 

services to residents. 


municipal networks or networks 

built by companies that specialize 

in bringing fiber to new buildings 

and subdivisions. 

Municipal utilities sometimes 

prefer to provide services directly, 

at least at the outset, for two reasons: 

First, it gives them more 

control over the quality of user 

experience on their networks, and 

second, they may have difficulty 

attracting third-party service providers 

to start-up networks. The 

downside of a closed network, 

however, is that there is less variety 

in content and services. Many public 

broadband advocates believe 

that opening networks to innovative 

service providers is the best 

way to maximize the networks’ 

value for their communities. Networks 

built with broadband stimulus 

funds must allow open access. 

Q: What about Wi-Fi or WiMAX? 

The FCC’s National Broadband 

Plan calls for wireless in remote 

Prefabricated pedestals a few feet high are unobtrusive 

and hold fiber distribution points. 

Some models can be entirely buried. 


OECD data for 1996-2007 analyzed by Raul L. Katz and Javier Avila, Columbia Institute for Tele-Information, 

for a 2010 paper 

areas. Isn’t that a good substitute 

for fiber? 

A: Wi-Fi, WiMAX and cellular service 

are important public amenities, 

but they are not substitutes or replacements 

for FTTH. Rather, they 

complement and extend fixed fiber 

networks. In fact, given that many 

wireless access points and cell sites 

are now fiber-connected – and that 

most of them will be soon – wireless 

service can be considered an ap- 

Though new wireless technologies have made 

possible all kinds of exciting services, wireless 

access alone cannot attract new businesses. 

plication on a fiber network rather 

than a separate type of network. 

Though new, high-bandwidth 

wireless technologies have made 

possible all kinds of exciting consumer 

and business services, wireless 

access alone cannot attract 

new businesses to a community or 

enable businesses to grow. Wireless 

networks that cover wide areas are 

not reliable enough to deliver video 

and other emerging broadband 

services with high quality of service. 

In general, no one has been able 

to develop a compelling business 

case for a municipalitywide Wi-Fi 

network. However, Wi-Fi in targeted 

areas such as commercial shopping 

streets may be worth considering. 

In addition, many multifamily 

community owners find that community 

wireless, as an adjunct to 

wireline broadband, is a valuable 

amenity. 

Q: Where can I go to find out more? 

A: The FTTH Council, www.ftth 

council.org, has quarterly meetings 

and monthly webinars. Broadband 

Properties’ municipal portal, www. 

munibroadband.com, can direct 

you to a number of additional resources. 

The magazine also maintains 

a database on its website, 

www.bbpmag.com, that shows 

all FTTH deployments by municipalities 

and others, including small 

telephone companies.

seven hundred thousand FTTH subscribers operated 

home-based businesses in 2010, and they added 

$41.6 billion to the U.S. economy in the 12 months 

ending August 2010. That number, calculated by market 

researcher Michael Render of RVA, is a conservative estimate. 

To place this figure in context, 700,000 jobs is more 

than the entire U.S. economy created in 2010! 

FTTH access is correlated strongly with establishment 

of a home business, according to Render’s data. Doubling 

the download bitrate of broadband services adds 0.5 per- 

50% 

45% 

40% 

35% 

30% 

25% 

20% 

Ftth generates Jobs 

Correlation of % who have done telework with 

Download/Upload speed (Mbps) 

DSL 

Cable 

Modem 

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 

FTTH access is correlated strongly with 

establishment of a home business, in the 

RVA LLC data. Doubling the bitrate 

adds a half percent to the number of 

customers with a home business. 

cent to the number of broadband customers with a home 

business. Small businesses also depend on broadband 

reliability and on upload speed – both areas where fiber 

vastly outpaces other broadband technologies. 

Some of this business revenue, of course, would have 

existed even if the business owners had no fiber access. 

But Render attributes nearly $10 billion of the $41 billion 

directly to fiber, because some of his survey respondents 

said their businesses would not even be possible 

without fiber and others said fiber made their businesses 

more efficient. 

FTTH 

FTTH access is strongly correlated 

with working at home, in RVA LLC 

customer survey data from spring 2010. 

Correlation of % who have a home-based business with 

Download/Upload speed (Mbps) 

17.2% 

17.0% 

16.8% 

16.6% 

16.4% 

16.2% 

16.0% 

15.8% 

15.6% 

2010 Research Shows 9% of FTTH Homes 

Report Home-Based Business Only Possible 

or More Efficient Due to FTTH 

2008 

2009 

2010 

7% 

DSL 

Cable 

Modem 

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 

9% 

13% 

0% 2% 4% 6% 8% 10% 12% 14% 

FTTH 

Home-based businesses are clearly 

facilitated by fiber; 9 percent of FTTH 

customers in spring 2010 claimed that 

fiber made their home business possible 

or more efficient. 

Source: RVA LLC. 


Ftth sUCCess stories 

the reliability, bandwidth and 

future-proofing of fiber to the 

premises creates new jobs and 

preserves old ones. Some examples: 

aUbUrn, ind. 

In 2005, Cooper Industries, a Fortune 

200 company whose global data operations 

were located in Auburn, was at a 

crossroads – it had to either expand its 

Auburn facility or relocate. The company’s 

most critical requirement was for 

fast, resilient and reliable broadband. 

Auburn Essential Services, a municipal 

broadband provider, worked with 

Cooper to craft a business-class broadband 

service and thereby preserve 

$7 million in annual payroll for the 

community. In addition, the city has 

retained a number of Internet-dependent, 

small but growing businesses. 

bristol, tenn. 

The Bristol Herald Courier’s new printing 

production facility features a stateof-the-art 

printing press – the first of its 

kind in the country. Owned by Media 

General and built by BurWil Construction 

Company, the $21 million facility 

has 50,000 square feet that is dedicated 

to producing and distributing seven 

Southwest Virginia newspapers. Jim 

Hyatt, Media General’s regional vice 

president and publisher, said the highspeed 

data transfer and reliable fiber 

optics were the main reasons for locating 

the facility in Bristol. More examples 

from Bristol, Tenn., are available at 

www.btes.net/btestestimonials.html. 

bristol, Va. 

BVU OptiNet has fundamentally 

changed the economic face of Southwest 

Virginia. Thanks to grants from 

the U.S. Department of Commerce 

and the Virginia Tobacco Indemnification 

and Community Revitalization 

Commission, businesses in seven rural 

counties in Southwest Virginia now 

have access to broadband speeds of 

up to 1 Gbps and transparent LAN service, 

which vastly improves their communications 

and networking capabilities. 

High-tech companies Northrop 


Grumman and CGI have both built 

major facilities in Russell County, and 

two new industrial parks are currently 

under construction in Buchanan 

and Tazewell counties. By 2008, the 

high-tech infrastructure had already 

brought 1,220 new jobs to Southwest 

Virginia, with more than $50 million in 

new private investment and $37 million 

in annual payrolls. Growth has 

continued through the recession. 

Another significant benefit is that 

small health clinics in isolated locations 

of Southwest Virginia can now 

be digitally linked to larger comprehensive 

hospitals. The University of 

Virginia at Wise launched the state’s 

first undergraduate software engineering 

program due to partnerships 

with Northrop Grumman and CGI. In 

addition, the town of Lebanon turned 

a former shopping center into the Virginia 

Technology Development Center, 

a new high-tech training facility to 

be managed by the University of Virginia 

at Wise. 

lenowisCo Planning 

distriCt Commission, 

Va. and ky. 

More from Southwest Virginia: Several 

business were able to stay or expand 

in the region because of broadband, 

including both home-based businesses 

and larger ones such as Crutchfield 

Electronics. New businesses 

that located in the area because 

of the broadband network include 

OnePartner, an advanced technology 

and application center and the only 

It is easy to find ducts for fiber. 

commercial Tier 3 data center in the 

United States. Holston Medical Group 

stores its electronic medical records 

at OnePartner’s data center, taking 

advantage of the data center’s capacity 

and connectivity to run virtual 

clinical trials. Altogether, the network 

attracted an estimated $50 million in 

corporate investments in the region 

and created 1,200 jobs even as the recession 

deepened. 

Residential customers are using 

broadband to better their lives in this 

economically depressed area as well. In 

a survey of its most recent 271 customers, 

29 percent said they used their new 

broadband service either for distance 

learning – to earn degrees that would 

make them eligible for better-paying 

jobs – or in home-based businesses. 

These work-from-home employees 

and owners of cottage industries represent 

a wide range of businesses, such 

as an interior designer using broadband 

to search for design inspirations, 

agents managing health insurance 

programs for a national health insurance 

company, a person managing 

orders for a national floral service over 

the Internet and a toolmaker selling 

wedges for leveling mobile homes. 

maCon and lebanon, mo. 

Shane Mayes, CEO, describes his Onshore 

Technology Services as a rural 

outsourcing company. It provides 

software development and integration 

and other technology services in 

an outsourced fashion in competition 

with vendors in India, China, Mexico, 

Russia and Brazil. His company opened 

in 2005 and has employees around the 

state. Mayes said he chose Macon and 

Lebanon for his offices because those 

cities had already run fiber to every 

business and household in their area 

His company would only open offices 

in communities with access to highspeed 

Internet, Mayes said. 

Chelan CoUnty, wa. 

Yahoo picked Wenatchee for a data 

center site. Said Kevin Timmons, Yahoo’s 

vice president of operations, “We

Recent advances in deployment technology have made installing 

fiber in multiple-dwelling-unit properties quick and inexpensive. 

chose North Central Washington for 

this important facility because of the 

great quality of life here, the immediate 

availability of suitable space, the 

‘can-do’ spirit of port and other community 

leaders we’ve met, the cost 

and reliability of electricity, and the 

access to a world-class fiber optic network. 

They’ve taken all the right steps 

to create a terrific environment for us.” 

Cody, Powell and 

ten sleeP, wyo. 

Eleutian partners with CDI Holdings 

of South Korea, a market leader in 

English education, to teach conversational 

English to South Korean students 

via high-speed videoconferencing. 

Headquartered in rural Ten Sleep, 

Wyo., Eleutian Technology operates 

nine teaching centers throughout the 

Western United States, including in 

FTTH communities Cody and Powell. 

They are open for business 24 hours 

a day, seven days a week. It’s the largest 

new job creator in the region. Said 

President Barack Obama in January, “In 

Ten Sleep, Wyo., a town of about 300 

people, a fiber-optic network allowed 

a company to employ several hundred 

teachers who teach English to students 

in Asia over the Internet, 24 hours a 

day. You’ve all heard about outsourcing. 

Well, this is what we call ‘insourcing,’ 

where overseas work is done right 

here in America.” 

Rob Duncan, COO of Alpine Access, 

a provider of contact center services 

that uses home-based agents, opened 

a virtual call center in Powell as well. 

He said, “Consider the 5,500 residents 

of Powell, Wyo. With 20 percent of the 

population below the poverty line 

and the town located 500 miles from 

the largest metropolitan area, the citizens 

knew something drastic needed 

to be done to save the idyllic quality 

of life they cherished in a small town. 

Together they decided to spend $4.9 

million on connecting each home to a 

private-public fiber optic network. This 

high-speed access helped connect 

them with distant relatives, provided 

online shopping and opened up new 

markets for local businesses. It also 

made the entire population attractive 

to virtual call center recruiters.” 

doUglas CoUnty, wa. 

Sabey’s new data center campus, Intergate.Columbia, 

sits on 30 acres and 

accommodates two data center buildings, 

including one 205,000-squarefoot 

structure and one of 188,000 

square feet. The buildings are served 

by a new, redundant substation on 

site. Douglas County PUD, along with 

its grid of hydroelectric power, supplies 

the site with abundant, inexpensive 

electricity, thereby reducing electric 

costs by 40 to 70 percent. Multiple 

fiber carriers are available to provide 

redundant service. 

gainesVille, Fla. 

Gainesville’s municipal network has 

attracted businesses to the area and 

allowed them to expand. The Prog- 

ress Corporate Park, located outside 

Alachua, has been served with broadband 

since 1998 and now hosts many 

biotech organizations as well as the 

University of Florida’s Sid Martin Biotechnology 

Incubator. GRUCom is 

also providing fiber services to Santa 

Fe College’s new Alachua Corporate 

Training Center, which will be located 

next to the research park. The center 

will provide workforce training for the 

biotech industry. 

The City of Gainesville partnered 

with the Council on Economic Development 

to provide high-speed connectivity 

to the Gainesville Technology 

Enterprise Center, which also fosters 

early-stage technology start-up companies. 

Several businesses that received 

connectivity at the enterprise 

center have matured and moved to locations 

where GRUCom’s services are 

available and continue to use them today. 

The fiber network has also allowed 

several existing companies to receive 

superior service at much lower prices. 

JaCkson, tenn. 

The Jackson Energy Authority, a publicly 

owned utility, built a fiber-to-thepremises 

system in its home town 

and surrounding areas and opened 

the system to service providers that 

sell telephone, Internet access and 

cable television to local residents and 

businesses. Among the companies 

in Jackson taking advantage of this 

state-of-the-art network: Trinity Solutions, 

Xpert Systems Integration and 

Interworks. All three, which position 

themselves as providers of IT support 

services for small businesses, locate 

their servers in Jackson Energy’s operations 

center. 

laFayette, la. 

The municipal FTTH system has attracted 

call centers and a myriad of 

video production operations – firms 

that depend on reliable broadband to 

move huge files back and forth among 

video editing and special effects firms 

worldwide. The result: thousands of 

new jobs. 


introdUCing 1 gbPs 

to the home 

Few individuals need 1 Gbps 

broadband to their homes today, 

but many people are betting 

that a gigabit will be the standard 

soon enough. Google chose Kansas 

City, Kan., over 1,100 other applicants 

for its first 1 Gbps FTTH build, and EPB 

Fiber Optics (the municipally owned 

network in Chattanooga, Tenn.) is now 

offering 1 Gbps access to residential 

and business customers throughout 

its service area. 

Announcing its program last year, 

Google offered several scenarios. 

“Imagine sitting in a rural health clinic, 

streaming three-dimensional medical 

imaging over the Web and discussing 

a unique condition with a specialist 

in New York,” its statement said. “Or 

downloading a high-definition, fulllength 

feature film in less than five minutes. 

Or collaborating with classmates 

around the world, while watching live, 

3D video of a university lecture.” 

google and kansas City 

“In selecting a city,” said Milo Medin, 

Google’s vice president for access services, 

“our goal was to find a location 

where we could build efficiently, make 

an impact on the community and develop 

relationships with local government 

and community organizations. 


... We’ll be working closely with local 

organizations including the Kauffman 

Foundation, KCNext and the University 

of Kansas Medical Center to help 

develop the gigabit applications of 

the future.” 

Pending approval from the city’s 

Board of Commissioners, Google expects 

to offer 1 Gbps service as early 

as 2012. Medin says Google will “also 

be looking closely at ways to bring 

ultra-high-speed Internet to other cities 

across the country. ... We can’t wait 

to see what new products and services 

will emerge as Kansas City moves from 

traditional broadband to ultra-highspeed 

fiber optic connections.” 

Medin described Kansas City as 

only “the start, not the end of the 

project.” He added, “Over the coming 

months, we’ll be talking to other interested 

cities about the possibility of us 

bringing ultra-high-speed broadband 

to their communities.” 

Chattanooga 

EPB’s 1 Gbps service is available to every 

home and business within EPB’s 

600-square-mile, nine-county service 

area. The Internet service rides on EPB’s 

all-fiber, smart-grid network, which 

EPB built with the help of a $111 million 

grant from the Energy Department 

before the economic stimulus added 

more smart-grid funding nationwide 

in 2009. 

The city says its 30 Mbps entrylevel 

service lets users download and 

record four channels at once for viewing 

later. And the electric utility saves 

at least $40 million a year on power by, 

among other things, reducing theft 

of electricity and shaving peak loads. 

But as Harold DePriest, CEO of EPB, 

said, “The overriding consideration 

is that this is a real tool for economic 

development for our community. It is 

the basis for creating the products and 

services of the Internet of the future. 

And it’s in Chattanooga today.”

Understanding Fiber 

network arChiteCtUres 

For historical reasons, optical networks 

developed along several 

parallel evolutionary paths. Unlike 

the Betamax/VHS wars, no one 

won the FTTH wars, so network builders 

can now choose among several 

options or even mix and match them 

as needed. The “family” of passive 

optical networks now has two major 

branches – PON and AON (also called 

P2P) – and many technical variants 

within those branches. 

PON stands for “passive optical 

network.” Networks are passive when 

they have no powered electrical devices 

between a central office and an 

end user. All the handling of the light 

beams that carry the signal is done 

with mirrors, prisms and fiber. 

AON stands for “active optical network.” 

As the name implies, these networks 

have electrical devices – generally 

Ethernet routers and switches 

– along the fiber path. These days, the 

“active electronics” are usually in central 

offices rather than in remote cabinets 

or local points of presence. 

For this reason, the industry has 

begun to call active networks pointto-point 

or P2P networks. This refers 

to the fact that each end user gets a 

dedicated fiber (or several dedicated 

fibers) extending from the central office 

to the user premises. By contrast, 

in a PON, which is sometimes called a 

point-to-multipoint network, each fiber 

in the central office carries signals 

to as many as 128 customers (16- and 

32-way splits are normal with today’s 

most widely used PON standards). 

Because each fiber requires its 

own laser, P2P networks require more 

power and space in the central office. 

But because they do not require fiber 

distribution hubs (containing optical 

splitters) in the field, they tend to be 

simpler to operate. 

eVolUtion oF Pon 

standards 

Within the general category of passive 

optical networks, there are two 

branches. One is based on Ethernet, 

the same standard that is used in home 

and corporate local-area networks. The 

Ethernet branch has been standardized 

by IEEE – the Institute of Electrical and 

Electronics Engineers. The other branch 

is based on carrier standards from the 

ITU – International Telecommunication 

Union – and is more “telephone-like.” 

the itU Family 

BPON (for “Broadband PON”) was 

the first PON standard widely used in 

North America. It is based on the ATM 

protocol and has a top speed to users 

of 622 Mbps and upstream speed 

of 155 Mbps, but it allows the use of a 

separate wavelength of light to support 

video services. 

BPON has largely been replaced by 

GPON, which allows 2.48 Gbps downstream 

to the user and 1.24 Gbps upstream 

and also has a separate video 

wavelength. GPON supports ATM, Ethernet 

and TDM (the protocol phone 

companies use for ordinary telephone 

service) by wrapping or “encapsulating” 

the data packets with extra bits. 

GPON became commercially available 

in 2006 and is the most widely 

used standard in North America today. 

A new upgrade, 10G GPON, is now 

becoming commercially available. 

As the name implies, downstream 

bandwidth is about 10 Gbps – four 

times the current standard. Upstream 

bandwidth has also been increased 

fourfold. However, 10G GPON is not 

expected to displace GPON in the near 

future; it is more likely to be adopted 

for enterprise use, mobile backhaul 

and fiber to the building applications. 

the ethernet Family 

The second branch of the PON family 

tree is the Ethernet branch. Ethernet is 

also used for active networks. 

The first Ethernet PON (EPON) standard 

was released by the IEEE a few 

months after the GPON standard in 

2004. The standard was quickly upgraded 

to 1.25 Gbps, twice the original 

bandwidth, as new electronic parts 

became available. 

Networks using that speed are 

sometimes called EPON and sometimes 

called GEPON (for Gigabit Ethernet 

PON). 2.5 GigE equipment started 

to be deployed in 2009 and equipment 

using 10 GigE in 2010. Like 10G 

GPON, 10G EPON is not yet used for 

individual residential deployments. 

new tyPes oF Ftth 

networks 

New fiber optic technologies are being 

developed to meet new needs. For 

example, the RFoG (Radio Frequency 

over Glass) and DPoE (DOCSIS Provisioning 

over EPON) standards allow 

cable providers to use their existing 

DOCSIS protocols with all-fiber networks. 

RFoG also permits the use of 

existing cable devices at the headend 

and user premises. 

WDM-PON adapts wavelength-division-multiplexing 

electronic equipment 

developed for the transport portion 

of the network for use in the access 

network. WDM-PON can provide the 

kinds of speeds seen in intercity networks 

(currently up to 100 Gbps). Deployment 

in homes and businesses, 

especially in MDUs, is now occurring. 


the Ftth CoUnCil 

CertiFiCation Program 

The FTTH Council will certify any home installation that 

meets its standard – fiber optic cable that extends all the 

way to the boundary of the home premises. Certified projects 

may display the program’s badge in their advertising. 

Certification is important because companies like to 

claim they have fiber networks, even when the fiber does 

not go all the way to the home. This can lead to consumer 

confusion. Consumers sometimes think they are getting 

the full benefit of 100-percent fiber broadband when in 

fact they are not. Once constituents understand the benefits 

of fiber, they will embrace it: 

• Consumers will understand the difference between 

FTTH and other “fiber networks” that aren’t as good 

and will embrace the superior experience of FTTH. 

• Communities will understand the benefits that broadband 

brings in terms of jobs, wages and direct benefits 

such as medical and education ser vices – especially 

when delivered in the best possible form – FTTH. 

• Investors will understand the benefits to companies 

that make the effort to build fiber to the home 

networks – in terms of increased customer loyalty, 

competitive advantage, return on invested capital 

and revenue. 

Details and an application form can be found on the Web at 

www.FTTHCouncil.org. 

1. FTTH, or fiber to the home, identifies a telecommunications 

architecture in which a communications path 

is provided over optical fiber cables extending from 

the telecommunications operator’s switching equipment 

to (at least) the boundary of the home living 

space or business office space (the side of the building 

or unit). This communications path is provided for the 

purpose of carrying telecommunications traffic to one 

or more subscribers and for delivering one or more 

services (for example Internet access, telephony and/ 

or video-television). 

2. For the FTTH Council to certify any service provider’s network 

as operating over fiber-to-the-home access and to 

grant that service provider use of the Fiber-Connected 

Home badge, that service provider[, and their network,] 

must identify the location, size, and equipment being 

used in sufficient detail for the Council to effectively certify 

those deployments. The service provider must also 

confirm that commercial services are currently being 

delivered to revenue-paying subscribers. 

3. The service provider must exhibit a high level of commitment 

to network-wide FTTH deployment as indicated 

by its “Strategic Commitment” to FTTH in its network. 

“Strategic Commitment” is defined as the ratio of: 

Total number of residential households in service provider’s 

serving areas to which services can be marketed 

over an FTTH access network (homes passed), divided by 

total residential households subscribed to voice, data or 

video services, served by service provider’s entire wireline 

network (total residential communication subscribers). 

This ratio must be 10 percent or higher. 

Join the FTTH Council – see page 11 

Become a CFHP! Certified Fiber to the Home Professional Program – see page 14 

To learn more about fiber to the home: 

FTTH Council 

www.FTTHCouncil.org 

1-866-320-6444 

info@ftthcouncil.org

Continued from Page 50 

generate publicity, the great majority 

do not appear on this list. However, 

for the first time, the list shows several 

telcos that have adopted FTTH 

technologies for wireless backhaul 

before actually extending fiber to any 

homes. 

Deploying fiber to cell towers 

could prove to be an excellent strategy 

for financing buildouts of fiber to 

the home. Because many cell towers 

are in residential areas, serving cell 

towers entails placing a great deal of 

fiber very close to residences – which 

can radically change the business 

case for extending fiber to the home. 

Automated meter reading and 

other smart-grid applications over 

fiber are not yet widespread, but 

they, too, could prove important to 

the business case for FTTH. Electric 

utilities are all exploring a variety of 

smart-grid applications, of which the 

simplest and most straightforward is 

meter reading. Rather than building 

their own high-capacity networks 

for smart grids, some utilities are 

discussing collaboration with telcos 

that have suitable networks. 

One independent telco, Hancock 

Telecom in Indiana, went so far as 

to merge with a local electric utility, 

Central Indiana Power, in large 

part to use its FTTH network as the 

smart-grid network. (The merged 

entity is now called NineStar Connect.) 

Other telcos transmit meter 

data to utilities or simply make 

meter data available to customers to 

help them monitor their own energy 

use. 

4 Most telcos use GPON technology, 

but active Ethernet is also important. 

The list BBP published in 2005 

included mainly BPON systems, 

with a few EPON and one active 

Ethernet system. All passive optical 

networks deployed today are at the 

gigabit standard; GPON deployments 

outnumber Gigabit EPON by 

about 10 to 1. (BBP is not aware of 

any deployments of 10G technology 

among independent telcos.) 

In addition, most of the older, 

pre-gigabit networks have been up- 


graded. The migration to GPON 

was speeded by the availability of 

Calix’s auto-sensing optical network 

terminals, which allow telcos to upgrade 

central-office equipment without 

having to replace equipment at 

customer premises. 

Although passive optical networking 

remains the most popular 

choice, at least 144 independent 

telcos now use active, or point-topoint, 

Ethernet. About half of those 

have made a companywide commitment 

to active Ethernet – in at least 

one case (Paxio) to support an openaccess 

model, in most other cases 

because they believe active Ethernet 

has more bandwidth headroom. The 

other half use GPON for residential 

services in towns and active Ethernet 

for sparsely populated areas where 

active Ethernet’s longer reach is an 

advantage, for business services or 

for other special purposes. 

A few telcos have deployed RFoG 

technology to upgrade HFC plant. 

Use of multiple FTTH technologies 

has become common – the list 

now shows 23 percent of telcos with 

multiple technologies, unchanged 

from fall 2010. This choice has become 

more practical now that more 

electronics vendors support multiple 

technologies, often from the same 

chassis. 

5 Several FTTH electronics vendors 

compete successfully in the independent 

telco market. 

Independent telcos differ substantially 

from the RBOCs in their dealings 

with vendors. RBOCs typically 

deal with large, global equipment 

vendors that design and manufacture 

equipment to their specifica- 

FTTH Electronics Vendors Used 

Note: Some telcos purchase equipment from multiple vendors. 

Calix 

Unknown/Undecided 

ADTRAN 

Enablence 

Motorola 

CTDI 

Alcatel-Lucent 

Allied Telesis 

Zhone 

Tellabs 

Hitachi 

Ericsson 

Cisco 

Telco Systems 

PacketFront 

Ciena 

4 

3 

3 

2 

1 

1 

7 

16 

15 

11 

11 

11 

47 

57 

82 


379 

0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 

Calix remains the leading electronics vendor in this market, with its market share increasing after the 

acquisition of Occam.

tions. The resulting equipment is not 

always well-suited to smaller, more 

rural markets. The three FTTH 

electronics vendors from which Verizon 

purchased most of its FTTH 

equipment – Alcatel-Lucent, Motorola 

and Tellabs – are relatively minor 

players in the Tier-2 and Tier-3 telco 

market, even though all three have 

had significant customer wins (notably 

Cincinnati Bell and Optimum 

Lightpath, which serve metropolitan 

markets). 

The great majority of independent 

telcos purchase their FTTH 

electronics, and often their fiber 

management equipment, from vendors 

that specialize in serving Tier-2 

and Tier-3 telcos. These vendors are 

less likely to design equipment for 

particular customers; rather, they 

supply equipment for a variety of use 

cases and help customers configure it 

to meet specific needs. 

When independent telcos first 

began deploying fiber in 2001, nearly 

all of them used FTTH electronics 

from Optical Solutions Inc. (OSI). 

Since Calix acquired OSI in 2005, 

it has continued to maintain OSI’s 

lead in this market. Calix’s recent 

acquisition of Occam Networks, its 

strongest rival in the Tier-3 market, 

increased its share from three-fifths 

to nearly two-thirds of the companies 

on the list. Some companies 

that supplied FTTH electronics to 

independent telcos in the past have 

withdrawn from this market. 


RUS funding became more important for 

independent telcos as the stimulus program 

replaced private sources that had dried up. 

Still, several other vendors are actively 

competing in this space, and 

more than half the telcos on the list 

have bought FTTH electronics from 

vendors other than Calix. At least 

15 percent have bought FTTH electronics 

from multiple vendors (even 

if Calix and Occam are counted as a 

single entity). 

Although press coverage often 

refers to independent telcos as if 

they were captive customers, this is 

far from true. Over the last several 

years, an increasing number of telcos 

have been willing to mix FTTH 

equipment from different vendors. 

6 The Rural Utilities Service is playing 

a larger role in funding independent 

telco FTTH builds. 

The RUS Broadband Loan program 

has been an important source 

of FTTH funding since its inception 

in 2004. However, many telcos 

saw RUS as a last resort, preferring 

to use internal funds or deal with local 

lenders if possible. In earlier iterations 

of this list, around 15 percent 

of telcos building fiber to the home 

used RUS loan funding. 

In the last two years, however, 

other funding sources have dried up; 

at the same time, the RUS has had 

$3.6 billion in broadband stimulus 

loans and grants to disburse in addition 

to its original loan programs. 

The total number of telcos that have 

used RUS funding for FTTH projects 

doubled over two years to 29 

percent last fall before falling to 28 

percent in 2011. BBP 

The following table shows independent telcos that have constructed FTTH networks or are actively planning them. A 

few companies identified as CLECs are non-telco amenity providers in some of the states where they operate. Many 

of the companies identified as ILECs are installing FTTH through their CLEC subsidiaries. We’ve made every effort to 

update the names of vendors and deployers to reflect mergers and rebrandings. If your company is missing, or if the 

information is incomplete, send corrections to masha@broadbandproperties.com. We update this list continually on 

www.broadbandproperties.com/search.php 


telCOS BuIlDInG 

FttH netWOrkS, 

By StAte 

Our count of independent telco 

FTTH networks by state still shows 

Iowa in the lead – not surprising, 

as Iowa has close to 250 rural telcos, 

far more than any other state. 

But Minnesota and Texas are close 

behind, and BBP has documented 

current or pending builds by independent 

telcos in 47 states, the District 

of Columbia and Puerto Rico. 

Only Massachusetts, Delaware and 

Rhode Island are missing from the 

list – and they are at the epicenter 

of Verizon’s FiOS build. 

StAte nO. 

IA. . . . . . . . . . . 53 

MN . . . . . . . . . 41 

TX . . . . . . . . . . 39 

KS . . . . . . . . . . 30 

WI . . . . . . . . . . 28 

OH . . . . . . . . . 23 

IL . . . . . . . . . . . 22 

OR . . . . . . . . . . 21 

NE . . . . . . . . . . 21 

GA. . . . . . . . . . 20 

NY . . . . . . . . . . 20 

IN . . . . . . . . . . 17 

NC . . . . . . . . . . 16 

ND . . . . . . . . . 16 

MO . . . . . . . . . 15 

SC . . . . . . . . . . 15 

ID . . . . . . . . . . 14 

AL . . . . . . . . . . 13 

CA . . . . . . . . . . 13 

CO . . . . . . . . . . 13 

MI . . . . . . . . . . 13 

SD . . . . . . . . . . 13 

KY . . . . . . . . . . 12 

OK . . . . . . . . . . 12 

AZ . . . . . . . . . . 11 

StAte nO. 

MT . . . . . . . . . 11 

TN . . . . . . . . . . 11 

PA . . . . . . . . . . 10 

UT . . . . . . . . . . 10 

FL . . . . . . . . . . . 9 

VA . . . . . . . . . . . 9 

AR . . . . . . . . . . . 8 

WA . . . . . . . . . . 8 

MS . . . . . . . . . . 7 

NM . . . . . . . . . . 7 

LA . . . . . . . . . . . 6 

WV . . . . . . . . . . 6 

NV . . . . . . . . . . . 5 

AK . . . . . . . . . . . 4 

VT . . . . . . . . . . . 4 

WY . . . . . . . . . . 4 

NH . . . . . . . . . . 4 

ME . . . . . . . . . . 3 

HI . . . . . . . . . . . 2 

MD . . . . . . . . . . 2 

CT . . . . . . . . . . . 1 

DC . . . . . . . . . . . 1 

NJ . . . . . . . . . . . 1 

PR . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Provider States vendor – 

FttH 

electronics 


Start 

Date 

Greenfield/replace/ 

Competitive 

Overbuild 

3 Rivers Communications MT Calix, Enablence 2006 Replace GPON, 


technology Services Provider 

type 

Triple Play ILEC 

702 Communications ND, MN Calix Overbuild Active Ethernet Voice, Data, 

Business Services 

Access2Go IL ADTRAN 2010 Overbuild GPON, 


Ace Communications Group MN Calix 2010 Active Ethernet ILEC 

Adak Telephone AK Calix 2006 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Adams Telephone Cooperative IL Calix 2006 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Albany Mutual Telephone Association MN Enablence 2006 Replace Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

Alenco Communications 

(Pathway Com-Tel) 

TX Calix 2002 Overbuild, Greenfield PON Triple Play ILEC 

All West Communications UT Calix 2004 Overbuild GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Allband Communications Cooperative MI Calix 2005 Greenfield GPON Triple Play, 

Security 

Allendale Communications MI Enablence 2005 Greenfield Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

Alliance Communications SD Calix 2006 Replace GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Allo Communications NE Calix 2005 Overbuild GPON, 


Triple Play, 


Alma Communications MO Enablence, Calix 2006 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Alpine Communications IA Calix 2007 Replace Active Ethernet Voice, Data ILEC 

Amherst Telephone Company WI 2009 Replace Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

Arcadia Telephone Cooperative IA Calix 2010 GPON, 


Armstrong Telephone PA GPON, 



CLEC 

CLEC 

ILEC 

CLEC 

ILEC 

Voice, Data ILEC 

Arthur Mutual Telephone OH ADTRAN 2010 Overbuild Active Ethernet ILEC 

Arvig Communications (East Otter Tail) MN Calix 1995 Replace, Greenfield GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Astound Broadband CA CTDI 2004 Replace EPON Voice, Data CLEC 

ATC Communications ID Calix 2008 GPON Triple Play ILEC 

ATMC NC Motorola, Calix 2005 Greenfield BPON, GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Aztech Cable AZ Calix Overbuild GPON Triple Play CLEC 

Baldwin Telecom WI Calix 2002 Greenfield GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Ballard Telephone KY Calix 2008 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Baraga Telephone MI Calix GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Barry County Telephone MI Calix GPON ILEC 

Bascom Mutual Telephone Company OH Calix 2003 Overbuild BPON Triple Play ILEC 

BayRing Communications NH ADTRAN 2010 Overbuild GPON Voice, Data CLEC 

Beaver Creek Cooperative 


OR Replace ILEC 

Beehive Telephone UT Replace ILEC 

BEK Communications ND Calix, Cisco 2004 Replace GPON, 



Ben Lomand Telephone Co-op TN Calix, 2006 Replace Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

Benkelman Telephone Company 

(Wauneta Telephone, BW Telcom) 

Benton Cooperative Telephone 

Company (Milaca Local Link) 

NE Calix 2009 GPON ILEC 

MN Calix, CTDI 2005 Greenfield GPON, EPON Triple Play ILEC 

Benton Ridge Telephone Company OH Calix 2010 Replace Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC


FttH 

electronics 


Start 

Date 


Competitive 

Overbuild 



type 

Bernard Telephone Company IA 2010 Replace Voice, Data ILEC 

BEVCOMM 

(Eckles Telephone Company) 

MN Calix 2007 Greenfield Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

Big Bend Telephone TX Calix, Enablence 2005 Replace GPON, 



Big River Telephone MO ADTRAN GPON CLEC 

Blair Telephone (HunTel) NE Calix GPON ILEC 

Blanca Telephone Company 

(Jade Communications) 

CO Tellabs 2006 Replace PON ILEC 

Bloomer Telephone WI Calix 2007 Replace GPON, 



Blossom Telephone Company TX Calix 2010 Replace ILEC 

Blue Valley Tele-Communications KS Tellabs 2006 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Border to Border Communications TX Calix, CTDI 2004 Replace BPON, EPON Triple Play ILEC 

Brantley Telephone GA Calix 2007 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Brazoria Telephone Company TX Alcatel-Lucent 2008 Greenfield GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Bretton Woods Telephone Company NH 2009 Replace Voice, Data ILEC 

Broadband Associates CA Overbuild CLEC 

BroadStar NC 2005 Greenfield Triple Play, 

Security 

Bruce Telephone Company MS 2009 Replace ILEC 

BTC (Breda Telephone Corp., 

Western Iowa Networks) 

BTC Broadband 

(Bixby Telephone Company) 

IA 2008 Overbuild Triple Play ILEC 

OK Calix 2005 Greenfield, Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Buckeye Telesystem OH Calix, CTDI 2006 Overbuild, Replace, 

Greenfield 

CLEC 

GPON, RFoG Voice, Data CLEC 

Buckland Telephone Company OH Calix 2005 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Buggs Island Telephone Cooperative VA Calix 2009 GPON ILEC 

Bulloch Telephone Cooperative GA Motorola, Calix 2005 Replace PON Triple Play ILEC 

Butler-Bremer Communications IA 2008 Replace Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

Calaveras Telephone CA Calix 2006 Greenfield GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Cal-Ore Communications OR Calix 2005 Greenfield GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Cambridge Telephone ID Calix 2005 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Cambridge Telephone Company NE Enablence 2009 Replace Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

Cameron Communications (LBH LLC) LA Calix 2004 Replace, Overbuild GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Canby Telcom OR Calix 2006 Greenfield, Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Cap Rock Telephone Cooperative TX Calix 2005 Greenfield GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Cascade Communications 

(formerly Cascade Telephone) 

IA Calix 2010 GPON ILEC 

Cass Communications IL 2010 Replace Triple Play ILEC 

Centennial de Puerto Rico PR Calix 2007 Replace Active Ethernet Voice, Data CLEC 

Central Scott Telephone IA Calix 2007 Overbuild GPON, 


Central Texas Technologies TX CTDI 2002 Greenfield EPON Triple Play CLEC 

CenturyLink AL, CO, MI, 

MO, WI, 

Others 

Calix, ADTRAN Greenfield GPON Triple Play, 

Mobile Backhaul 

ILEC 

ILEC

» Distribution and Logistics 

» Extensive Integration Services 

(Assemble, Wire, Test) 

» Engineering Services 

» Nationwide Installation Services 

» Fiber Deployment Strategies 

» IP Appliance Confi guration 

Services 

» RUS Approved Products 

» Electronic Data Interchange 

(“EDI”) 

» Personal Attention from Inside 

and Outside Sales Teams 

» Small Women Owned Business 

Qualifi cation 

» Customer Asset Management 

Program (CAMP) 

Walker has the products, solutions, experience and expertise to provide you maximum 

opportunities in all your broadband initiatives. 

Contact us today to learn about our Broadband Stimulus Readiness Programs!


FttH 

electronics 

Champaign Telephone 

(CT Communications) 


OH Calix, Allied 

Telesis 

Start 

Date 


Competitive 

Overbuild 

Replace GPON, 


Chariton Valley Telecom Corporation MO Enablence, Calix 2003 Replace, Overbuild GPON, 


Chazy Westport Communications 

(Westelcom) 

Chequamegon Communications 

Cooperative 



type 



NY Calix 2009 Replace, Overbuild Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

WI 2010 Triple Play ILEC 

Chesnee Telephone SC Calix Greenfield GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe 

Telephone Authority 

SD Calix GPON ILEC 

Chickamauga Telephone GA Calix 2008 GPON ILEC 

Chickasaw Telecom Services OK Calix 2010 GPON Voice, Data, 


ChoiceTEL Communications WI ADTRAN 2008 Overbuild GPON Triple Play CLEC 

Christensen Communications MN Calix 2008 Replace BPON, GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Cimarron Telephone OK Calix 2008 GPON ILEC 

Cincinnati Bell OH, KY Alcatel-Lucent, 

Motorola 

ILEC 

2009 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Cinergy MetroNet IN Alcatel-Lucent 2005 Overbuild BPON Triple Play CLEC 

Citizens Mutual IA Calix 2006 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Citizens Telephone Company GA CTDI, Cisco 2008 Replace EPON, GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Citizens Telephone Company of 

Kecksburg 

PA Calix 2005 Replace PON Triple Play ILEC 

Citizens Telephone Coop WI Calix GPON ILEC 

Citizens Telephone Cooperative VA Calix 2004 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

CityNet WV, OH ADTRAN 2010 Replace GPON CLEC 

Clarence Telephone IA Calix BPON, GPON ILEC 

Clarks Telecommunications (Northeast 

Nebraska Telephone Company) 

NE Calix 2009 Replace Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

Clear Creek Telephone & TeleVision OR Calix 2009 GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Clear Lake Telephone IA Calix 2008 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Clearwave Communications IL Calix GPON CLEC 

C-M-L Telephone Cooperative 

Association 

Cochrane Cooperative 


IA Calix 2010 Replace Triple Play ILEC 

WI Calix 2010 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Colo Telephone Company IA Calix 2005 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Columbus Telephone Company KS Enablence 2004 Replace EPON Triple Play ILEC 

Communications 1 Network IA Calix 2008 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Comporium Communications 

(Lancaster Telephone) 

SC Enablence 2004 Greenfield EPON, GPON Triple Play ILEC 

ComSouth Telecommunications GA Calix, Motorola 2005 Greenfield, Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

ComSpan USA OR Hitachi 2005 Overbuild GPON Triple Play CLEC 

Connections Etc. (Sherburne County 

Rural Telephone Co./Iowa Telecom) 

Consolidated Communications Inc. IL, TX Zhone 

Technologies 

Consolidated Telcom 

(Consolidated Enterprises) 

MN Calix 2008 GPON ILEC 

2007 GPON Triple Play ILEC 

ND Calix 2006 Replace GPON, 


Triple Play ILEC


FttH 

electronics 

Consolidated Telecommunications 

Company 


Start 

Date 


Competitive 

Overbuild 

MN Calix 2005 Overbuild GPON, 



type 

Triple Play, Mobile 

Backhaul 

Consolidated Telephone Co. NE ADTRAN 2010 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Conxxus (Illicom Telecommunications) IL Enablence 2001 Overbuild EPON Triple Play CLEC 

Cooperative Telephone Exchange IA Calix 2006 Replace Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

Cordova Telephone Cooperative AK 2010 Replace Voice, Data ILEC 

Corn Belt Telephone IA 2008 Replace Triple Play ILEC 

CP-Tel LA Calix 2004 Greenfield BPON, GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Craigville Telephone Company IN Calix 2006 Overbuild GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Craw-Kan Telephone Cooperative KS ADTRAN GPON ILEC 

Cross Communications OK Calix GPON Triple Play ILEC 

CSS Communications WA CTDI 2003 Replace EPON Triple Play CLEC 

CT Communications NC Enablence 2005 Greenfield EPON Voice, Data ILEC 

CTS Telecom 

(Climax Telephone Company) 

MI ADTRAN 2010 GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Cunningham Telephone and Cable KS 2009 Replace Voice, Data ILEC 

Custer Telephone Cooperative ID Calix 2006 Replace GPON, 



ILEC 


D&E Communications PA Calix 2008 GPON ILEC 

D&P Communications (Deerfield 

Farmers’ Telephone Company) 

MI Motorola 2008 GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Dakota Central Telecom ND Calix, 2002 Replace, Overbuild GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Darien Telephone GA Calix GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Daystarr Communications MI Calix 2008 Overbuild GPON CLEC 

Delhi Communications NY Enablence 2009 Replace Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

DFT Communications (Dunkirk & 

Fredonia Telephone Co.) 

NY Calix, ADTRAN Overbuild GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Dickey Rural Networks ND, SD Calix 2004 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Diller Telephone Company NE ADTRAN 2009 Replace GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Direct Communications OR, WA, 

ID, UT 

Calix Greenfield BPON, GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Dobson Telephone OK Calix GPON ILEC 

Doylestown Telephone Company OH Overbuild Triple Play ILEC 

DTC Communications (DeKalb 

Telephone Cooperative) 

TN 2008 Active Ethernet Voice, Data ILEC 

Dumont Telephone Company IA Hitachi 2006 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Duo County Telephone Cooperative KY 2010 Replace Triple Play ILEC 

EasyTel Communications OK Calix 2005 Overbuild PON Triple Play CLEC 

EATEL LA Alcatel-Lucent, 

Calix 

Egyptian Telephone 

Cooperative Association 

Ellsworth Cooperative 

Telephone Association 

Emily Cooperative 


2004 Greenfield, Replace BPON, GPON Triple Play ILEC 

IL Calix 2010 GPON, 



IA 2010 Replace Voice, Data ILEC 

MN 2007 Triple Play ILEC 

Endeavor Communications IN Calix 2006 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Enhanced Telecommunications 

Corporation 

IN Calix 2004 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC


FttH 

electronics 


Start 

Date 


Competitive 

Overbuild 



type 

ENMR-Plateau Telecommunications NM Calix 2003 Replace GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

En-Touch Systems TX Enablence 2006 Greenfield EPON Triple Play, 

Security, 

Home Automation, 

Meter Reading 

Epic Touch 

(Elkhart Telephone Company) 

KS Enablence, Calix 2005 Replace EPON, GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Etex Telephone Cooperative TX Calix, Enablence 2002 Overbuild GPON, 


Evertek (FiberComm) IA GPON, 


CLEC 



F&B Communications IA Calix Overbuild BPON, GPON Triple Play ILEC 

FairPoint Communications WA, MANY Calix Greenfield GPON ILEC 

Falcon Broadband CO Hitachi 2005 Greenfield, Overbuild GPON Triple Play CLEC 

Farber Telephone Company MO 2008 Replace Voice, Data ILEC 

Farmers and Merchants Mutual 


Farmers Independent 


IA Calix 2007 BPON, GPON Triple Play ILEC 

WI Calix 2010 GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Farmers Mutual ID Calix Replace BPON, GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Farmers Mutual MN Calix Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Farmers Mutual Cooperative 


Farmers Mutual Telephone Company 

(OmniTel Communications) 

Farmers Telecommunications 

Cooperative 

IA 2007 Replace Triple Play ILEC 

IA ADTRAN 2010 Replace Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

AL Calix 2007 Greenfield, Replace Active Ethernet Voice, Data ILEC 

Farmers Telephone Cooperative SC Calix 2006 Greenfield, Replace GPON, 


FEC Communications 

(Connextions Telecom) 

TX Calix 2006 Greenfield GPON, 



Triple Play CLEC 

Federated Telephone MN Calix 1996 Replace, Overbuild GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Fenton Cooperative 


IA Calix 2009 GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

FiberNet WV, OH Calix 2007 Overbuild BPON, GPON Voice, Data, Videoconferencing 

Fidelity Telephone MO Calix BPON, GPON, 


Filer Mutual ID ADTRAN, Calix Replace GPON ILEC 

Foothills Rural Telephone Coop KY Alcatel-Lucent 2004 Greenfield, Replace BPON, 


CLEC 

ILEC 


Fort Jennings Telephone Company OH Calix 2004 Replace, Overbuild GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Fort Mojave Telecommunications AZ Calix 2008 Greenfield, Replace GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Frontier Communications Many Calix Greenfield BPON, GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

FTTH Communications MN Calix 2002 Greenfield GPON Triple Play CLEC 

Fulton Telephone Company MS Calix 2010 GPON Mobile Backhaul ILEC 

Ganado Telephone TX Calix 2008 Replace Active Ethernet Voice, Data ILEC 

Garden Valley Telephone MN Calix 2005 Replace BPON, GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Gardonville Cooperative 


MN 2006 Replace ILEC 

General Communications AK Calix Replace GPON Voice, Data CLEC


FttH 

electronics 


Start 

Date 


Competitive 

Overbuild 



type 

Geneseo Telephone Calix 2010 GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Geneva Broadband NE Calix 2009 Overbuild GPON Voice, Data CLEC 

Gervais Telephone OR Calix 2001 Replace, Overbuild GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Gila River Telecommunications AZ Calix BPON, GPON ILEC 

Glasford Telephone Company IL ADTRAN Greenfield GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Glenwood Telephone NE Calix 2007 Replace BPON, GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Global Valley Networks CA 2005 Greenfield PON Voice, Data ILEC 

Golden Belt Telephone Association KS Calix 2008 Replace Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

Golden West Telephone Company SD Calix 2004 Replace GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Goldfield Telephone Company IA 2007 Replace, Overbuild Triple Play ILEC 

Gorham Telephone KS Calix 2007 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Granby Telephone Company 

(GTC Broadband) 

Grand Mound Cooperative 


MO Calix 2009 Replace Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

IA Calix 2005 Replace, Overbuild PON Triple Play ILEC 

Grand River Mutual Telephone Corp. MO, IA 2009 Replace ILEC 

Grande Communications TX Ericsson, Calix 2005 Overbuild PON, GPON Triple Play CLEC 

Granite State Telephone (GSInet) NH 2007 Greenfield, Replace Voice, Data ILEC 

Great Plains Communications NE Enablence, 

ADTRAN 

2007 Greenfield, Replace GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Greenfield Communications AZ, CA Calix, CTDI 2005 Greenfield GPON, EPON Triple Play CLEC 

Gridley Telephone IL Calix 2006 BPON, GPON Triple Play ILEC 

GTel Teleconnections 

(Germantown Telephone) 

NY Calix 2008 Replace GPON Triple Play, Videoconferencing 

Gulfpines Communications MS Calix GPON ILEC 

GVTC Communications TX Calix 2004 Greenfield, Replace, 

Overbuild 

GPON Triple Play, 

Security 

H&B Communications KS Calix GPON ILEC 

Halstad Telephone Company ND, MN Calix 2010 Replace GPON, 


ILEC 

ILEC 


Hamilton County Communications IL 2010 Replace Triple Play ILEC 

Harbor Communications AL ADTRAN Overbuild GPON Voice, Data CLEC 

Hardy Telecommunications WV Zhone 

Technologies 


Hargray Communications SC CTDI, Calix 2004 Greenfield EPON, GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Harrisonville Telephone IL Calix 2007 Greenfield BPON, GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Hartelco NE 2009 Replace GPON, 



Hartington Telephone Company NE 2009 Replace Triple Play ILEC 

Hawaiian Telecom HI Alcatel-Lucent 2006 Greenfield, Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Hayneville Telephone AL Enablence 2008 Overbuild GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Heart of Iowa 

Communications Cooperative 

Hershey Cooperative 


IA Calix 2005 Replace BPON, GPON Triple Play ILEC 

NE ADTRAN 2010 GPON ILEC 

Hiawatha Broadband MN Calix 2005 Overbuild GPON, RFoG Triple Play CLEC 

Hiawatha Telephone Company MI 2010 Replace Voice, Data ILEC 

Hickory Tech (Enventis) MN, WI Calix, Motorola 2002 BPON, GPON, 


Triple Play ILEC


FttH 

electronics 

Hickory Telephone PA Zhone 

Technologies 


Start 

Date 


Competitive 

Overbuild 


type 


Highland Telephone Cooperative TN, KY Calix 2008 GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Highland Telephone Cooperative VA Enablence 2007 GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Hill Country Telephone Cooperative TX Calix 2007 Greenfield, Replace GPON, 


Triple Play, 

Security 

Hinton Telephone OK Calix 2002 BPON ILEC 

Home Communications 

(Home Telephone Company) 

KS Replace Triple Play ILEC 

Home Telephone SC Calix 2001 Greenfield GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Home Telephone IL Calix, ADTRAN 2006 Greenfield GPON, RFOG Voice, Data ILEC 

Home Town Telephone 

(Home Town Cable Plus) 

FL Calix 2004 Greenfield GPON Triple Play, 

Security 

Hood Canal Telephone Company WA Motorola 2004 Replace PON Triple Play ILEC 

Horizon Chillicothe Telephone 

(Horizon Telcom) 

OH Calix, 2007 GPON, 


Horry Telephone Coop SC Motorola, Calix 2004 Greenfield, Replace PON, GPON, 


Hospers Telephone Exchange 

(HTC Communications) 

Hotwire Communications FL, VA, NJ, 

NY, PA, GA, 

SC, NC, MD 


ILEC 

CLEC 



IA Calix 2010 Replace Triple Play ILEC 

Calix, Motorola Greenfield, Overbuild GPON Triple Play, Home 

Automation 

Hunter Communications OR Calix 2010 GPON, 


CLEC 

Voice, Data CLEC 

Huxley Telephone IA Calix 2001 Replace, Overbuild PON Triple Play ILEC 

IAMO Telephone IA, MO ADTRAN 2010 Replace Active Ethernet Voice, Data ILEC 

iCornerstone GA CTDI 2004 Greenfield EPON Triple Play CLEC 

IdeaOne Telecom Group ND Calix 2002 Overbuild GPON, 


Indiantown Telephone System 

(ITS Telecom) 

Triple Play, 


FL Calix 2006 Greenfield GPON Triple Play, Mobile 

Backhaul 

Industry Telephone Company TX Calix 2010 GPON Mobile Backhaul ILEC 

InterBel Telephone Cooperative MT Triple Play ILEC 

Interstate Communications 

(Southwest Telephone Exchange, 

Interstate 35 Telephone Company) 

IA Calix 2010 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Interstate Telecommunications 

SD Calix 2006 Replace, Overbuild BPON, GPON, Triple Play ILEC 

Cooperative (SS Telecom) 


Jaguar Communications MN Calix 2006 Overbuild GPON Triple Play CLEC 

James Valley Cooperative 


SD Replace, Overbuild Triple Play ILEC 

JBN Telephone Company KS 2010 Replace Voice, Data ILEC 

Johnson Telephone Company MN Calix 2008 GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Kalida Telephone OH Calix GPON ILEC 

Kalona Cooperative 

IA 2009 Replace GPON, Triple Play ILEC 

Telephone Compan 


Kanokla Telephone KS Calix, Zhone 

GPON, Voice, Data ILEC 

Technologies 


Kaplan Telephone LA Calix 2005 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Kerman Telephone Company CA Active Ethernet Voice, Data ILEC 

CLEC 

ILEC


FttH 

electronics 


Start 

Date 


Competitive 

Overbuild 



type 

KMTelecom MN 2008 Replace ILEC 

Knology 

(acquired Sunflower Broadband) 

La Jicarita Rural Telephone 

Cooperative 

AL, GA, TN, 

FL, SC, KS 

Ericsson, 2005 (K), 

Enablence, Calix, 2003 (S) 

Motorola 

Greenfield, Replace, 

Overbuild 

EPON, GPON, RFoG Triple Play, 


NM 2010 Replace Voice, Data ILEC 

Lackawaxen Telephone PA Calix 2010 GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

LaHarpe Telephone KS Calix 2006 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Lakeland Communications WI Calix 2010 GPON, 


CLEC 


Laurel Highland Total Communications 

(Laurel Highland Telephone, 

Yukon Waltz) 

PA ADTRAN, Calix 2003 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Lavalle Telephone Cooperative WI Calix 2006 Greenfield Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

LaWard Telephone Exchange TX ADTRAN 2010 Replace GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Leaco Rural Telephone Cooperative NM Calix 2010 GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Lehigh Valley Cooperative 


IA Calix GPON ILEC 

Lemonweir Valley Telephone WI Calix 2008 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Lexcom NC CTDI, Enablence 2007 Replace RFoG, EPON Triple Play ILEC 

Liberty Communications IA Calix, 2008 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Ligonier Telephone IN Calix 2008 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Lincoln County Telephone System NV Alcatel-Lucent 2008 Greenfield, Replace GPON Triple Play, 

Security 

ILEC 

Lincoln Telephone MT Calix GPON ILEC 

LISCO IA Calix 2005 Overbuild Active Ethernet Triple Play CLEC 

Lismore Cooperative 


MN 2010 Replace Active Ethernet Voice, Data ILEC 

Litestream Technologies FL Calix 2002 Greenfield PON Triple Play, 

Security 

CLEC 

Long Island Fiber Exchange NY 2007 Overbuild Active Ethernet Voice, Data, 


CLEC 

Long Lines NE Enablence 2007 Overbuild EPON Triple Play ILEC 

Lonsdale Telephone MN Calix GPON ILEC 

Loretel Systems MN Calix 2009 GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Loretto Telephone TN Calix 2010 GPON, 



Lost Nation-Elwood Telephone IA Calix GPON ILEC 

Mabel Telephone Cooperative MN Enablence 2006 Replace PON Triple Play ILEC 

Madison Telephone KS Calix 2009 Replace GPON, 



Mahaska Communications Group IA Calix 2004 Overbuild GPON, 


Triple Play CLEC 

Mainstay Communications (Henderson 

Cooperative Telephone Company) 

NE 2009 Replace Triple Play ILEC 

Manawa Telephone WI Calix 2010 GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Manti Tele Communication Company UT Enablence 2008 Replace Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

Margaretville Telephone Company NY CTDI 2007 Overbuild RFoG Triple Play ILEC 

Marquette-Adams 

Telephone Cooperative 

WI Calix 2008 Replace, Overbuild GPON, 


Triple Play ILEC


FttH 

electronics 

Matanuska Telephone Association AK Calix, ADTRAN, 

Telco Systems 


Start 

Date 


Competitive 

Overbuild 



type 

2007 Greenfield, Replace BPON, GPON Triple Play, 

Mobile Backhaul, 


McClure Telephone Company OH Enablence 2006 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

McDonald County 


MO Enablence, Calix 2009 Replace Triple Play ILEC 

McDonough Telephone Cooperative IL Calix 2007 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Medicine Park Telephone Company OK, TX Motorola 2008 Greenfield, Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Melrose Telephone Company 

(diversiCOM) 

MN 2009 Replace Triple Play ILEC 

Metrostat Communications NC CTDI 2006 Overbuild EPON Voice, Data CLEC 

Mid Century Telephone Cooperative IL ADTRAN 2007 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Middleburgh Telephone Company NY Calix, Motorola 2008 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Mid-Plains Rural 


TX Calix 2008 Replace GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Mid-Rivers Communications MT Calix 2010 Replace Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

Midstate Communications SD Calix 2008 Replace Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

Midstate Telephone ND Calix GPON ILEC 

Midvale Telephone AZ, ID Calix 2006 Greenfield, Overbuild BPON, GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Minburn Telephone IA Calix Replace BPON, GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Minford Telephone Company OH Calix 2009 GPON ILEC 

Minnesota Valley Telephone MN Calix GPON ILEC 

Missouri Telephone MO Allied Telesis 2006 Greenfield Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

Moapa Valley Telephone Company NV ADTRAN 2010 GPON ILEC 

MoKan Dial KS, MO Calix BPON ILEC 

Molalla Communications Company OR Calix, ADTRAN 2004 Greenfield GPON, 


Momentum AL Alcatel-Lucent 2007 Greenfield GPON Triple Play, 

Security 

Monitor Cooperative 


ILEC 


OR 2009 Replace Voice, Data ILEC 

Monon Telephone Company IN Calix 2009 GPON ILEC 

Monroe Telephone Company OR ADTRAN, Calix 2010 GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Montana Opticom 

(Lightnex Communications, Vivid) 

Moore and Liberty, Griggs 

County Telephone/Internet 

Communications 

Mosaic Telecom 

(Chibardun Telephone Cooperative) 

MT Calix, ADTRAN 2002 Greenfield, Overbuild GPON Triple Play CLEC 

ND Calix 2010 Replace GPON, 


CLEC 


WI Calix 2007 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Mosinee Telephone WI Calix GPON ILEC 

Moundville Telephone Company AL ADTRAN 2008 Greenfield Voice, Data ILEC 

Mountain Rural Telephone 

Cooperative 

KY Calix 2010 Replace Triple Play ILEC 

Mountain View Telephone 

(Yelcot Telephone) 

AR Calix GPON Triple Play ILEC 

MTCO Communications 

(Metamora Telephone) 

IL Calix 2008 Overbuild GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Mud Lake Telephone 


ID Calix 2010 Active Ethernet ILEC


FttH 

electronics 


Start 

Date 


Competitive 

Overbuild 


type 

Mulberry Cooperative Telephone IN Calix 2009 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Mutual Telephone Company KS Calix 2008 Replace GPON ILEC 

Nebraska Central Telephone Company NE ADTRAN 2010 GPON ILEC 

Nehalem Telecommunications OR Calix BPON, GPON ILEC 

Nelson Telephone Cooperative WI 2010 Replace ILEC 

Nemont Telephone Cooperative 

(Project Telephone) 

MT Calix 2006 Replace GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Network Communications TX ADTRAN 2010 Overbuild GPON Voice, Data CLEC 

Nevada Comstock Communications NV 2008 Greenfield, Overbuild Active Ethernet Voice, Data CLEC 

New Hope Telephone Cooperative AL Calix 2006 Replace Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

New Knoxville Telephone Company OH Enablence, 

ADTRAN 

2004 Replace EPON, GPON Triple Play ILEC 

New Windsor Telephone IL Calix 2009 Replace, Overbuild Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

Niagara Telephone Company WI Calix 2008 GPON ILEC 

NineStar Connect 

(formerly Hancock Telecom) 

Nortex Communications 

(Muenster Telephone) 

IN Enablence, Calix 2002 Greenfield EPON, GPON Triple Play, Meter 

Reading 

TX Calix 2007 Replace GPON, 



ILEC 


North Central Telephone Cooperative TN, KY Calix 2007 Replace Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

North Dakota Telephone Company ND Allied Telesis 2005 Replace Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

North Penn Telephone Company PA Calix 2008 GPON Triple Play ILEC 

North State Communications NC Calix 2005 Greenfield BPON, GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Northeast Florida Telephone Company FL Calix 2005 Greenfield GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Northeast Louisiana 


LA Calix 2010 Replace Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

Northeast Missouri Rural Telephone MO Calix 2009 Replace Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

Northern Arkansas Telephone 

Company (NATCO) 

AR Calix 2009 Replace Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

Northern Telephone Cooperative MT Calix 2008 Replace GPON ILEC 

North-State Telephone Company OR Calix Replace GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Northwest Communications 

Cooperative 

ND Calix 2008 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Northwestern Indiana Telephone IN Calix 2010 GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Nsight WI Enablence 2003 Greenfield Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

NTELOS VA Alcatel-Lucent, 

Tellabs, Ciena, 

ADTRAN, Zhone 

Technologies 


Nunn Telephone CO Calix 2010 GPON ILEC 

Omnilec IL Calix BPON CLEC 

One Source Communications TX ADTRAN 2010 Overbuild GPON Triple Play CLEC 

Oneida County Rural 


NY Calix 2010 GPON ILEC 

Ontario and Trumansburg Telephone NY Calix 2010 GPON, 


Openband VA, MD, DC Calix 2005 Overbuild GPON Triple Play, 

Security 


Optimum Lightpath CT, NY Cisco, Tellabs Overbuild Active Ethernet Triple Play, 


CLEC 

CLEC


FttH 

electronics 


Start 

Date 


Competitive 

Overbuild 



type 

Oregon Telephone OR Calix 2006 Replace GPON ILEC 

Orlando Telephone Company FL Enablence 2007 Overbuild EPON Triple Play CLEC 

Ottoville Mutual Telephone OH Calix 2010 GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Oxford Networks ME Calix, ADTRAN 2001 Replace, Overbuild GPON, 



Palmetto Rural Telephone Cooperative SC Calix 2010 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Panhandle Telephone Cooperative OK 2010 Replace Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

Panora Cooperative 


(Guthrie Telecommunications) 

IA Calix 2002 Replace, Overbuild GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Park Region Mutual 


MN Calix Overbuild GPON ILEC 

Parker FiberNet GA Calix 2006 Replace GPON Voice, Data CLEC 

Paul Bunyan Rural 

MN Calix, Allied 2004 Replace, Overbuild GPON, EPON, Triple Play ILEC 


Telesis 


PAXIO CA PacketFront 2004 Greenfield, Overbuild Active Ethernet Voice, Data CLEC 

PBT Telecom SC Motorola 2005 Greenfield GPON, BPON Triple Play ILEC 

Pembroke Telephone Company GA Calix, ADTRAN 2004 Greenfield, Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Pembroke Telephone Cooperative VA Calix 2008 GPON ILEC 

Penasco Valley Telecommunications NM Calix 2008 GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Peoples Rural Telephone Cooperative KY Calix 2008 Replace GPON, 



Peoples Telecommunications KS 2010 Voice, Data ILEC 

Peoples Telephone Cooperative TX ADTRAN 2009 Replace GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Perry-Spencer Rural Telephone 

IN Enablence, Calix 2009 Replace GPON, Triple Play ILEC 

Cooperative (PSC) 


Phillips County Telephone Company 

(PC Telcom) 

CO ILEC 

Piedmont Rural Telephone Company SC Calix, ADTRAN 2010 GPON ILEC 

Pine Drive Telephone Company CO Calix 2008 GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Pine Telephone Company OK 2010 Voice, Data ILEC 

Pine Telephone System OR Calix 2010 GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Pine Tree Networks ME Calix BPON ILEC 

Pineland Telephone Cooperative GA Calix 2006 Greenfield, Replace, 

Overbuild, 

Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

Pinnacle Communications AR Calix 2005 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Pioneer Communications KS Calix 2009 GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Pioneer Telephone Cooperative OK, KS Calix 2008 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Pioneer Telephone Cooperative OR Calix GPON ILEC 

Plains Cooperative 


CO 2010 Voice, Data ILEC 

Plainview Telephone Company 

(Nyecom) 

NE Calix 2009 Replace GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Plant Telephone GA Calix BPON ILEC 

Planters Telephone Company GA Calix 2006 Greenfield GPON, 



Poka Lambro Telephone Company TX Calix 2005 Overbuild GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Polar Communications ND, MN Calix 2007 Replace GPON, 


Triple Play ILEC


FttH 

electronics 


Start 

Date 


Competitive 

Overbuild 


type 

Pottawatomie Telephone Company OK Calix 2009 GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Prairie Grove Telephone Company AR Calix 2007 Greenfield Active Ethernet Voice, Data ILEC 

Premier Communications IA Calix GPON ILEC 

Prime Time Communications CO, UT, 

NV, MS 

PrimeLink 

(Champlain Telephone Company) 

Calix, Alcatel- 

Lucent, 

Enablence 

2004 Greenfield GPON, EPON Triple Play CLEC 

NY Calix, CTDI 2002 Overbuild EPON, GPON, 



Progressive Rural Telephone Co-op GA ADTRAN 2010 GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Project Mutual Telephone Co-op ID Calix, ADTRAN 2005 Overbuild, Greenfield GPON, 



Public Service Telephone Company GA Calix 2005 Greenfield GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Pulaski/White Rural 


IN 2010 Overbuild ILEC 

Radcliffe Telephone Company IA Calix 2009 GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Rainbow Telephone 


KS Calix 2008 GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Rainier Connect WA Calix 2010 GPON ILEC 

Randolph Telephone NC Calix 2005 Greenfield GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Range Telephone Cooperative 

(Advanced Communications 

Technology, Dubois Telephone 

Exchange) 

MT, WY Calix 2008 Overbuild GPON, 



Readlyn Telephone Company IA Calix 2008 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Red River Telephone ND, MN Calix 2005 Replace GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Reliance Connects 

(Rio Virgin Telephone/Cascade 

Utilities/Trans-Cascade Telephone) 

NV, OR Calix, ADTRAN 2008 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Reservation Telephone Cooperative ND Calix 2007 Replace GPON Triple Play, Meter 

Reading, Security 

Reynolds Telephone IL Calix 2009 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Rice Belt Telephone AR ADTRAN 2009 GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Richland-Grant Telephone Cooperative WI Calix 2006 Greenfield GPON, 



ILEC 


Ridgeville Telephone Company OH Enablence 2006 Overbuild EPON Triple Play ILEC 

Ringgold Telephone GA Enablence, Calix 2004 Greenfield EPON, GPON, 



Ritter Communications AR Enablence 2006 Greenfield, Overbuild Active Ethernet Voice, Data ILEC 

River Valley Telephone Cooperative IA Calix 2008 GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Roberts County Telephone 


(RC Communications) 

Rochester Telephone Company IN Enablence, Zhone 

Technologies 

Rockwell Cooperative 


SD Calix 2004 Triple Play ILEC 

2002 Replace EPON, GPON Triple Play ILEC 

IA Enablence 2007 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Ronan Telephone MT Calix BPON, 


Royal Telephone Company IA Calix 2005 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

RST Communications SC, NC Motorola 2010 Overbuild GPON Triple Play, 

Meter Reading, 

Home Automation, 

Security 

ILEC 

CLEC


FttH 

electronics 


Start 

Date 


Competitive 

Overbuild 



type 

RT Communications WY Enablence, Calix 2006 Replace GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

RTC Communications IN Calix 2005 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Runestone Telephone Association MN Calix 2007 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Rural Telephone (Nex-Tech) KS Calix 2001 Replace, Overbuild GPON, 



Rye Telephone Company CO Calix 2002 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

S&T Telephone Cooperative KS Calix 2008 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Saddleback Communications AZ Calix 2008 GPON ILEC 

San Carlos Apache Telecom AZ Calix GPON ILEC 

San Isabel Telecom CO Calix 2002 Greenfield GPON Triple Play CLEC 

Sandwich Isles Telecom HI Calix GPON ILEC 

Santa Rosa Telephone Cooperative TX Calix 2005 Overbuild GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Santel Communications SD Enablence 2005 Overbuild EPON Triple Play ILEC 

SC Telcom (South Central Telephone, 

South Central Wireless) 

KS Calix 2002 Replace, Overbuild GPON, 



Scio Mutual Telephone Association OR Calix 2004 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Scott County Telephone Coop VA, TN Enablence, Calix 2004 Replace EPON, GPON, 



Sebastian (Audeamus) CA Calix 2009 Greenfield Triple Play ILEC 

Shawnee Telephone Company IL Zhone 

Technologies 

Shenandoah Telecommunications VA, WV Enablence, 

Motorola 

Sherwood Mutual 


2010 Replace GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

2006 Greenfield EPON Triple Play, 

Security 

OH Calix Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Sierra Telephone CA Calix 2010 GPON ILEC 

Silver Star Communications WY Calix 2005 Greenfield GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Siren Telephone WI Allied Telesis 2008 Replace Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

Siskiyou Telephone CA Replace ILEC 

Skyline Membership Corporation NC Allied Telesis, 

Calix 

ILEC 

2004 Replace PON Triple Play ILEC 

Sledge Telephone Company MS Calix 2009 Replace Active Ethernet Voice, Data ILEC 

Slic Network Solutions 

(Nicholville Telephone Company) 

NY Calix 2009 Overbuild GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Smart City FL Calix Greenfield BPON, GPON, 



Smartcom Telephone TX ADTRAN 2010 Overbuild GPON Voice, Data CLEC 

Smithville IN Calix 2008 Replace GPON, 



Socket Telecom MO 2010 Triple Play CLEC 

Solarus WI Calix GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Sonic.net CA 2010 Overbuild Fiber to Building Voice, Data CLEC 

South Central Communications UT Calix 2002 Greenfield GPON Triple Play ILEC 

South Central Rural 


KY ADTRAN 2009 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

South Plains Telephone Cooperative TX Calix Greenfield GPON ILEC 

South Slope Cooperative 


IA Calix 2004 Replace GPON, 


Triple Play ILEC

From The Desk of: Joe McInnovator - Director of IT 

2011 Objectives- 

•Build a Smarter Network 

•Eliminate infrastructure 

upgrades 

With decades of experience building the world’s 

smartest networks, AFL and Tellabs provide 

end-to-end solutions inclusive of passive fiber 

optic product, electronics, network engineering 

and integration services . From FTTH to 

Optical LAN, we build Smart Networks 

that are scalable, reliable and efficient . 

AFLglobal.com/go/SmartNetworks2


FttH 

electronics 

Southeast Nebraska 



Start 

Date 


Competitive 

Overbuild 



type 

NE 2009 Replace Voice, Data ILEC 

Southeastern Indiana Telephone IN 2010 GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Southern Kansas Telephone KS Calix 2008 Replace GPON, 



Southern Light Fiber AL ADTRAN 2010 GPON CLEC 

Southern Montana 


Southwest Arkansas 


Southwest Michigan Communications 

(Bloomingdale Telephone) 

MT Calix 2009 Replace GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

AR 2010 Triple Play ILEC 

MI Calix Overbuild GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Southwest Texas Telephone TX ADTRAN 2010 GPON ILEC 

Spring Grove Communications MN Calix 2007 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Spring Valley Telephone WI 2009 Replace Triple Play ILEC 

Spruce Knob Seneca Rocks Telephone WV Calix 2008 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

SRT Communications ND Zhone 

Technologies, 

Calix 

2008 Greenfield, Replace GPON, 


St. John Telephone Company WA 2007 Replace ILEC 

St. Paul Cooperative 


OR Calix 2008 GPON ILEC 

Stanton Telecom NE Calix 2010 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Star Telephone Membership 

Corporation 

NC 2009 ILEC 

State Telephone Company NY Calix 2009 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Stayton Cooperative Telephone OR Calix 2009 Replace GPON, 


Stoneham Cooperative 

Telephone Corporation 

Strata Networks (formerly UBTA-UBET 

Communications) 

Stratford Mutual Telephone Company IA Zhone 

Technologies 

SureWest Communications CA, KS, MO Calix, Allied 

Telesis, ADTRAN 

Surry Telephone Membership 

Corporation 

ILEC 


CO 2010 Replace Voice, Data ILEC 

UT Calix 2007 Greenfield GPON, 




2001 Greenfield, Replace, 

Overbuild 

PON, GPON, 


NC Allied Telesis 2008 Replace EPON, Active 

Ethernet 



Swisher Telephone Company IA Calix 2009 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Sycamore Telephone Company OH 2010 Voice, Data ILEC 

Syringa Networks UT, ID 2010 Overbuild Active Ethernet CLEC 

T2 Communications MI Calix 2005 Greenfield, Overbuild GPON Triple Play CLEC 

Table Top Telephone AZ Calix 2010 GPON, 


Tamarack Video & Telecom ID Calix 2008 Greenfield GPON Triple Play CLEC 

Tatum Telephone TX ADTRAN 2010 GPON ILEC 

Taylor Telephone Cooperative TX Zhone 

Technologies 

ILEC 

2007 Replace GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

TDS Telecom WI, MN Calix, Ericsson 2005 Greenfield GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Tech Valley Communications NY Calix 2006 Overbuild GPON Voice, Data CLEC 

Tel West Network Services Corporation TX ADTRAN 2010 Overbuild GPON Voice, Data CLEC


FttH 

electronics 


Start 

Date 


Competitive 

Overbuild 


type 

TelAtlantic WV Tellabs 2006 Greenfield BPON Triple Play ILEC 

Tele-Media Solutions IN ADTRAN 2010 Greenfield GPON ILEC 

Telepak Networks MS Calix 2005 Overbuild GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Telephone Electronics Corporation 

(TEC, Bay Springs) 

Telephone Service Company 

(Hanson Communications) 

MS, AL, TN ADTRAN, 2008 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

OH Triple Play ILEC 

Teljet Longhaul VT Overbuild Active Ethernet Voice, Data CLEC 

Teton Telecom ID Calix 2004 Greenfield GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Thacker-Grigsby Telephone KY Calix GPON ILEC 

Three River Telco NE 2008 Replace ILEC 

Titonka Burt Communications IA ADTRAN Active Ethernet ILEC 

Tohono O’odham Utility Authority AZ 2010 Replace ILEC 

Toledo Telephone WA Calix 2006 Overbuild GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Topsham Telephone VT Calix 2006 GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Transtelco TX Calix 2010 Overbuild GPON, 


Voice, Data CLEC 

Tri County Telephone (TCT West) WY Calix 2004 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Triangle Communications (Triangle 

Telephone Cooperative, Central 

Montana Communications) 

MT 2007 Replace GPON, 



TriCounty Telecom NC 2009 Greenfield, Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Tri-County Telephone Association KS Calix 2009 Replace GPON, 


TrioTel Communications 

(McCook Cooperative) 


SD Calix 2009 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Troy Cable AL Hitachi 2008 Overbuild RFoG Triple Play CLEC 

Trumansburg Telephone NY Tellabs, Calix 2009 Replace GPON, 



Truvista Communications SC Calix GPON Triple Play ILEC 

TSC OH Calix 2003 Overbuild GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Tularosa Basin Telephone Company NM Calix 2006 Replace Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

Twin Lakes Telephone Cooperative TN ADTRAN 2008 Replace, Overbuild GPON Triple Play, 

Security 

Twin Valley Telephone KS Allied Telesis 2006 Replace, Overbuild Active Ethernet, 

EPON 


ILEC 


Union River Telephone Company ME Calix 2008 Replace GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Union Springs Telephone AL Calix 2001 Replace GPON, 



Union Telephone NH Enablence 2007 Replace Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

United Telephone Association KS Calix 2010 GPON Triple Play ILEC 

United Telephone Company TN Calix 2004 Greenfield GPON Triple Play ILEC 

United Telephone 

Mutual Aid Corporation 

ND Allied Telesis, 

Calix 

2008 Replace Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

United Telesystems GA Alcatel-Lucent 2003 Overbuild BPON Triple Play CLEC 

Upper Sioux Community MN Calix 2009 GPON ILEC 

Upsala Cooperative Telephone MN Calix 2010 GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

US SONET IL Enablence 2003 Overbuild PON Triple Play CLEC 

Valley Telecom Group AZ Enablence 2005 Replace EPON, GPON, 


Triple Play ILEC


FttH 

electronics 

Valley Telecommunications 

Cooperative 

Valley Telephone Cooperative 

(VTCI, VTX Telecom) 


Start 

Date 


Competitive 

Overbuild 



type 

SD Calix 2008 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

TX Enablence 2005 Greenfield, Replace, 

Overbuild 

GPON, 



Velocity Telephone MN 2010 Overbuild Active Ethernet Triple Play CLEC 

Venture Communications Cooperative SD Calix 2006 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Venus Telephone Company PA 2010 Replace Triple Play ILEC 

Veracity Networks UT Telco Systems 2005 Greenfield Active Ethernet Triple Play, Gaming CLEC 

Vermont Telephone VT Calix 2007 Replace BPON, GPON, 



Vernon Telephone Cooperative WI Triple Play ILEC 

Volcano Telephone CA Calix 2010 GPON ILEC 

Wabash Mutual Telephone OH Enablence, Calix 2005 Replace, Overbuild EPON, GPON, 



Wabash Telephone Cooperative IL Calix 2010 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Wahkiakum West Telephone WA Replace ILEC 

Waitsfield and Champlain Valley 

Telecom (Waitsfield-Fayston 

Telephone Company) 

VT Enablence 2007 Greenfield Active Ethernet Voice, Data ILEC 

Walnut Communications IA 2009 Overbuild ILEC 

Wamego Telecommunications KS Calix 2002 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Warwick Valley Telephone 

NY Enablence, Calix 2006 Overbuild GPON, Triple Play ILEC 



Webster-Calhoun Cooperative 


IA Calix 2005 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

West Carolina Tel SC Calix 2008 Replace GPON, 



West Central Telephone MN Calix 2005 Replace PON Triple Play ILEC 

West Kentucky Rural 


TN, KY 2010 Replace Triple Play ILEC 

West Plains Telecommunications 

(Five Area Telephone Cooperative) 

TX CTDI 2006 Replace EPON Triple Play ILEC 

West River Cooperative 


SD Calix 2007 Replace GPON ILEC 

West Texas Rural Telephone 

Cooperative (WT Services) 

TX Calix 2007 Overbuild GPON Triple Play ILEC 

West Wisconsin Telcom Cooperative WI Calix 2007 Replace GPON ILEC 

Westel Fiber ID Greenfield Triple Play CLEC 

WesTel Systems IA Calix 2009 GPON ILEC 

WesTex Telephone Cooperative & 

Telecommunications 

TX ADTRAN 2010 Active Ethernet ILEC 

Westphalia Telephone (Clinton County MI Calix 2006 Overbuild GPON, 

ILEC 

Telephone Company) 


Wide Open West (Sigecom) IN Motorola, Calix 2001 Overbuild GPON Triple Play CLEC 

Wiggins Telephone CO Calix 2008 Replace GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Wikstrom Telephone Company MN Calix 2010 Replace GPON, 



Wilkes Telecommunications NC Allied Telesis 2009 Replace Active Ethernet Triple Play ILEC 

Wilkes Telephone & Electric GA Calix 2006 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Willard Telephone CO 2010 Replace Voice, Data ILEC


FttH 

electronics 


Start 

Date 


Competitive 

Overbuild 


type 

Wilson Communications KS ADTRAN 2010 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Windstream Communications AL, AR, FL, 

GA, KY, NE, 

NC, SC, TX 

Calix 2006 Greenfield GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Windwave Communications OR Calix 2004 Overbuild PON Triple Play CLEC 

Winn Telephone MI Calix Overbuild BPON ILEC 

Winnebago Cooperative 

Telecom Association 

IA, MN Calix GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Wittenberg Telephone WI Calix BPON ILEC 

WNM Communications NM ADTRAN 2010 Active Ethernet Voice, Data, 


Woodhull Telephone Company IL Calix 2010 Replace Triple Play ILEC 

Woodstock Telephone Company MN Tellabs 2008 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

XFONE (NTS, Pride Network) TX, LA Calix, ADTRAN 2003 Greenfield, Overbuild GPON Triple Play CLEC 

XIT Rural Telephone Cooperative TX Calix 2008 Replace GPON Triple Play ILEC 

Yadkin Valley Telecom NC Zhone 

Technologies 

Yucca Telecom (Roosevelt County 

Rural Telephone Cooperative) 


ILEC 

2007 GPON Triple Play ILEC 

NM Calix 2005 Replace GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Zial Networks ID, UT 2003 Greenfield, Overbuild Active Ethernet Triple Play CLEC 

Zito Media PA 2008 Overbuild Voice, Data CLEC 

Zona Communications AZ Calix T:8.125” 

2005 Greenfield GPON Voice, Data ILEC 

Virtually invisible. 

Just like the One Pass Mini. 

Introducing the new 3M One Pass Mini Fiber Pathway. 

It’s small, discreet (practically invisible) and incredibly versatile. 

The One Pass Mini uses 3M adhesive to stick to almost any wall 

surface, including painted concrete. The One Pass Mini delivers 

triple play services inside a residence and can be used with or 

without the 3M One Pass Fiber Pathway hallway solution, part 

of the 3M Total Package. 

To see it for yourself, visit 3M Booth #314 

at the Broadband Properties Summit 

3M.com/OnePass


Modeling the Cost 

Of rural Fiber Deployment 

An important new study of independent telco FTTH deployments provides a 

cost model that both providers and policymakers can use. 


In 2009 and early 2010, the Omnibus 

Broadband Initiative team that 

developed the National Broadband 

Plan for the Federal Communications 

Commission released estimates of the 

cost of deploying fiber to all American 

homes. These estimates, which seemed 

surprisingly high to people who had 

experience with FTTH buildouts, convinced 

policymakers – and the news- 

Mining its extensive database of rural 

fiber-to-the-home deployments, the 

engineering firm Vantage Point Solutions 

developed a cost model that is generally 

applicable to rural areas of the United States. 

paper-reading public – that fiber to the 

home should not be an important part 

of the plan. 

Of course, there was dissent. For 

example, Calix, the FTTH electronics 

vendor that has worked with more 

than half the rural telcos deploying fiber 

in the U.S., presented evidence to the 

FCC that its estimates were too high. 

Broadband Properties discussed the unreasonableness 

of the FCC’s numbers in 

these pages and in Take It to the Bank, 

the editor’s blog on www.bbpmag.com. 

However, no solid basis existed for estimating 

actual costs – or for deciding, 

from a policy standpoint, in which areas 

fiber deployment made sense. 

vAntAGe POInt rISeS tO 

tHe CHAllenGe 

Vantage Point Solutions, an engineering 

firm based in Mitchell, S.D., has extensive 

experience designing FTTH networks. 

When Larry Thompson, Vantage 

Point’s CEO, studied the FCC numbers, 

he concluded that they did not reflect his 

experience of rural construction costs. 

Vantage Point was then working 

with the Nebraska Rural Independent 

Companies, a group of 19 telcos, to prepare 

comments on FCC notices of proposed 

rulemaking. Thompson recalls, 

“When we sat down with the Nebraska 

group, rather than complaining, we 

asked what we could do that was better.” 

The group decided to sponsor an 

analysis of FTTH deployments by 63 

independent telcos for which Vantage 

Point already had detailed data and then 


Masha Zager is the editor of Broadband Properties. You can reach her at masha@ 

broadbandproperties.com. 


develop a model that could help predict 

costs of future rural fiber deployments. 

The available data was for network 

builds in 227 rural areas and 209 town 

areas. (The towns are typically small 

towns outside metropolitan areas.) 

In addition to Vantage Point, several 

other firms participated in the study: 

Consortia Consulting of Lincoln, Neb.; 

Rolka, Loube, Saltzer Associates of Harrisburg, 

Pa.; and Stone Environmental 

of Montpelier, Vt. 

DePlOyMent COStS – 

WHAt WAS InCluDeD 

For the analysis, Vantage Point considered 

the cost in each area of engineering 

the network, purchasing and installing 

electronics for central offices and 

customer premises, purchasing spare 

parts and miscellaneous materials, and 

purchasing and installing mainline and 

drop fiber optic cables and fiber management 

equipment. Mainline fiber 

cables were generally sized to accommodate 

anticipated growth. 

Vantage Point did not consider the 

costs of upgrading middle-mile networks, 

even though such upgrades are 

needed in many areas to enable FTTH 

networks to deliver high-speed Internet 

connections at a reasonable cost. 

Thompson explains that because the 

policy debate centered on the local loop, 

his primary concern was to estimate the 

costs involved in upgrading local loops.

Nearly all the deployers in the Vantage 

Point study had used direct-buried 

fiber, though they had placed some fiber 

in existing conduit in town areas and 

strung a small amount on utility poles. 

In addition, nearly all deployers dedicated 

a fiber from the central office to 

each customer, either because they had 

placed their PON splitters in central offices 

or, in a few cases, had used pointto-point 

technology. 

AnAlySIS OF vAntAGe 

POInt reCOrDS 

In addition to cost records, Vantage 

Point had access to other critical data – 

physical measurements of the lengths of 

fiber deployed as well as the number of 

locations (homes, businesses or multiple 

dwelling units) that were connected to 

fiber. In most cases, there was one subscriber 

per location. 

To begin the analysis, Vantage Point 

compared overall, inflation-adjusted 

costs for each of the 436 areas with the 

number of locations per square mile and 

per route mile. As the graph shows, the 

cost per location was strongly related to 

density. Linear density (locations per 

route mile) proved to be a much better 

predictor of costs than area density 

(locations per square mile) – a finding 

that accords with common sense, even 

though area density is the measurement 

more commonly used in telecommunications 

planning. 

A regression analysis yielded the following 

cost equation: 

Cost per location = $4,430 + 

$12,911 * (route miles/locations) 

In other words, for each subscriber 

location there is a large fixed cost for 

equipment, installation and so forth, 

plus a share of the cost of the outside 

plant, which takes the fiber from the 

central office to the subscriber location. 

In this study, the outside plant for all 

436 deployments accounted for about 

58 percent of the total construction 

cost, but in any particular area, the cost 

per location of outside plant depended 

on how many locations shared the cost. 

In a town, the second component 

may be very small, and therefore the 

cost per location is relatively low – even 

though outside-plant costs per mile are 


actually much higher in towns because 

town projects require more conduit, 

more frequent road crossings and more 

coordination with other utilities. Out in 

the country, the cost per mile is lower, 

but with few locations on each route, 

the cost per location may be very high. 

Because the population density varied 

so much, overall costs per location were 

double in the rural areas – $9,286 compared 

with $4,438 in towns. 

The explanatory power of this equation 

was very high: R-squared is 0.87, 

meaning that linear density alone explains 

87 percent of the variation in cost 

per location. 

uSInG PuBlIC DAtA 

Performing this initial analysis demonstrated 

that the costs of FTTH deployment 

were highly predictable. However, 

the model does not actually help telcos 

or government agencies predict fiber deployment 

costs unless they first count 

the locations to be connected and then 

Cost per Location by Route Density 

design and measure fiber routes to all 

those locations. 

For a model to be generally applicable, 

it would have to make use of readily 

available data rather than requiring 

an engineering study of each potential 

deployment area. Thus, Vantage Point’s 

next step was to identify public variables 

that correlated closely with the variables 

in its model. 

For the number of locations, the 

company tried substituting the number 

of households as measured by the U.S. 

Census Bureau. This approach would 

not have worked in metropolitan areas, 

where households typically can choose 

among two or three broadband providers 

and many do not take fiber services. 

However, in the rural regions covered 

in this study, the number of subscriber 

locations is closely related to the number 

of households. Thompson explains, 

“Most of these deployments were by incumbents 

whose cables were 40 years old 

and needed to be replaced, so they put a 

For a model to be generally applicable, it has to 

make use of readily available data rather than 

requiring an engineering study of each 

potential deployment area. 


drop in every location. We were assuming 

there would be 100 percent service.” 

That assumption proved to be valid. 

Changing the “locations” variable to 

“households” caused very little change 

in the cost model. 

To replace the number of mainline 

fiber route miles with a public variable, 

Vantage Point first substituted road 

miles, based on GIS data and a national 

database of streets. This substitution assumed 

that houses or businesses were 

located along every road in the area and 

that fiber could be deployed along all 

roads. As it turned out, these assumptions 

were not entirely accurate. Vantage 

Point then adjusted the road mileage to 

eliminate unpopulated areas and road 

types that were unlikely to support utility 

rights-of-way. 

With census households and adjusted 

road miles replacing locations and 

mainline fiber route miles, the equation 

changed slightly: 

Cost per household = $5,042 + 

$13,134 * (adjusted road miles/ 

households) 

reFInInG tHe MODel 

Using the new equation, any rural telco 

could now estimate fiber deployment 

costs from readily available data without 

doing an engineering study – a great benefit. 

However, the explanatory power of 


Thompson hopes to augment the model with 

data from additional deployments. Rural FTTH 

deployers that would like to contribute data 

are invited to participate. 

resOurces And cAll 

fOr pArticipAnts 

the new equation was not quite as good as 

that of the original equation; it accounted 

for only 82.5 percent of the variation in 

FTTH construction costs, compared 

with 87 percent for the first equation. 

So Vantage Point looked for additional 

variables beyond road miles per 

household that might help it estimate 

deployment costs more precisely. After 

testing a number of possibilities, the 

company identified the total number of 

households, the frost index, the percentage 

of wetlands, the soil texture and the 

number of intersections as statistically 

significant variables. All had small effects 

on total cost, compared with the effect of 

route density. Still, adding them into the 

equation raised the model’s explanatory 

power back to nearly 87 percent. 

The final cost modeling equation 

looks like this: 

Cost per household = $3,072 + 

$13,365 * (adjusted road miles/ 

households) - 0.8867 * households 

+ $25.04 * frost index + 

$17,700 * wetlands percentage + 

$1,376 * soils texture + $165.40 

* road intersection frequency 

The absolute number of households 

has a small negative effect on cost per 

household because there is an economyof-scale 

effect – managing a larger project 

is slightly more cost-efficient than 

managing a smaller project. 

Detailed reports from Vantage Point about this cost-modeling project are 

available on the Rural tab of the Broadband Properties website at www. 

bbpmag.com/mt12.php. 

To participate in the project by contributing data about additional FTTH 

deployments, contact Larry Thompson at larry.thompson@vantagepnt.com. 


The remaining four variables reflect 

physical conditions that make construction 

more difficult: Frost days shorten 

the construction season. Fiber construction 

in wetlands requires additional 

approvals and specialized techniques. 

Rocky soils and certain kinds of dense 

soils are harder to dig. Finally, road intersections 

slow fiber construction and 

impose other costs. 

uSInG tHe MODel 

In January, Thompson, along with another 

consultant who participated in the 

study and two representatives of the Nebraska 

Rural Independent Companies, 

presented the model to staff members of 

the FCC Wireline Competition Bureau. 

They explained that the model could help 

rural providers predict capital expenditures 

and could help policymakers evaluate 

the national cost of deploying a highcapacity 

terrestrial broadband network. 

In addition, they said, the model 

could be used to develop an upper limit 

on “reasonable” capital expenditures for 

telcos subject to rate-of-return regulation 

and to help choose among competing recipients 

in light of funding limitations. 

“We were very warmly received by 

the FCC,” Thompson says. “The FCC 

was extremely positive. They were very 

excited – they’d never seen any sort of 

analysis with the level of accuracy that 

we appear to have.” 

Thompson hopes to continue the 

study to make the model still more useful. 

“There are rough edges we’re working 

to refine,” he explains. For example, 

the “soils texture” variable does not 

seem to reflect actual costs in rocky and 

clay soil areas, and an enhanced measure 

of soil difficulty might improve the 

model’s accuracy. 

Most important, however, is augmenting 

the data set with results from 

additional deployments. One limitation 

of the current data is that the 63 telcos 

whose data was used are located in 15 

upper central and southeastern states. 

The West Coast, Southwest and Northeast 

are not well represented, and the 

model may be less applicable to those 

regions. Vantage Point has invited other 

engineering companies and telcos to 

contribute their data and help build a 

truly national cost model. BBP

Incorporating Broadband Properties 

Change effective with annual 

May-June Municipal Issue 

We urge you to subscribe today— 

FREE to those who qualify. 

With our new name, BRoadBand CommunitiEs 

will continue to be the leading source of information on digital 

and broadband technologies for buildings and communities. 

In every Issue, we will continue to offer in-depth 

news, expert insights, and practical know-how on all 

aspects of outfitting properties and communities 

with broadband solutions. Our editorial aims to 

accelerate the deployment to Fiber-To-The-Home 

and Fiber-To-The-Premises while keeping readers 

up to date on the available solutions capable of 

serving their practical needs. 

• original Research • trusted Reports 

• Latest trends • industry news 

every issue is filled with valuable articles on 

Technology, Finance, Law and Marketing. 

We urge you to subscribe today — for Free! 

www.bbpmag.com • 877.588.1649

technology 

Making the Most 

Of a Fiber Network 

An all-fiber network isn’t just a high-powered version of a traditional 

copper network. It offers entirely new opportunities – and poses entirely 

new challenges as well. 

By Irit Gillath ■ Telco Systems 

Created in 1953 to provide telephone 

service to residents in 

remote areas of Alaska, Matanuska 

Telephone Association (MTA) 

was challenged to meet the bandwidth 

needs of its customers, who span a 

10,000-square-mile area from just north 

of Anchorage to just south of Fairbanks. 

It found a solution by replacing copperbased 

services with optical fiber. 

Just five years ago, MTA began offering 

transparent LAN and Metro Ethernet 

services to schools and businesses, 

and it has now started to connect cell 

nue or aiming to improve services to the 

community may find it can leverage its 

investment in fiber to create a multiservice 

Ethernet network that can support 

customers for many years to come. 

ServInG BuSIneSS CuStOMerS 

Even though residential services continue 

to grow and new customers sign 

up for services every day, return per residential 

customer is not high. However, 

business customers are also looking for 

new broadband services and are willing 

to pay for them accordingly. 

Companies want higher data speeds, 

Business customers are looking for new 

broadband services, such as off-site storage and 

cloud computing, and are willing to pay for them. 

sites with fiber. Today, MTA supports a 

true multiservice offering that provides 

residents, corporations, government entities 

and mobile operators a secure and 

reliable Carrier Ethernet network. 

Matanuska leveraged its investment 

in fiber to offer a diversified portfolio 

of services that extends well beyond fiber 

to the home, fulfilling its mission 

to provide state-of-the-art, reliable and 

competitively priced communications 

that contribute to community economic 

development. 

As Matanuska’s example shows, any 

company seeking new sources of reve- 

both upstream and downstream. They 

also want higher quality of service to 

enable applications such as off-site or 

online storage, cloud computing, Webbased 

training and support services, 

customer portals and high-definition 

videoconferencing. 


According to research firm Vertical 

Systems Group in its August 2010 

Global Provider Ethernet Leaderboard, 

“Demand for global business Ethernet 

services was solid in the first six months 

of 2010. … Projected double-digit port 

growth rates remain on target for 2010 

across all regional Ethernet services 

markets.” There’s a good reason for that 

growth: Ethernet is no longer just an 

enterprise best-effort technology but has 

moved into the carrier networks, where 

it is displacing legacy time-division multiplexing 

(TDM) technology. 

The Carrier Ethernet services market 

is in the growth phase of its product life 

cycle because of the standardization of 

switched Ethernet products such as Ethernet 

virtual private line (EVPL) and 

virtual private LAN service (VPLS). 

CArrIer etHernet CHAllenGeS 

AnD SOlutIOnS 

Corporations may require their service 

providers to commit to the level of the 

service promised, demanding assured 

service rather than best-effort service. In 

some cases, they require a service-level 

agreement (SLA) for each service they 

purchase based on the criticality of the 

service to business operations, application 


Irit Gillath is vice president for IP product line management and business development 

at Telco Systems, which specializes in Carrier Ethernet solutions. You can reach 

her at 785-843-0695 or by email at igillath@telco.com. Find out more at www. 

telco.com.

latency and packet-loss requirements, 

and other considerations. 

In the last 10 years, many standards 

organizations, including the Institute 

of Electrical and Electronic Engineers 

(IEEE) and International Telecommunication 

Union Telecommunication 

Standardization Sector (ITU-T), as well 

as industry groups such as the Metro 

Ethernet Forum (MEF), have finalized 

technologies to support the demanding 

requirements of the carrier market. 

These include link, transport and service 

operations, administration and 

maintenance (OAM) schemes. 

By ensuring that the solutions they 

deploy adhere to approved standards for 

OAM test and measurement applications, 

providers can guarantee that their 

networks will support the levels of service 

promised and will do so even when 

network equipment is supplied by multiple 

vendors. 

Providers in the United States also 

continue to maintain legacy T1 services 

to businesses and cannot risk cannibalizing 

this service offering while 

they migrate to IP networks. Carrier 

Ethernet offers service providers an opportunity 

to migrate TDM traffic onto 

a fiber-based IP network through the 

use of pseudowire or circuit-emulation 

services. Voice can be transformed 

into VoIP, and a provider can consolidate 

voice, video and data over a single, 

highly resilient network capable of scaling 

well beyond 10GE. 

MOBIle BACkHAul ServICeS 

As more and more customers adopt 

smartphones and use them for a growing 

number of services, the mobile telecommunications 

market is experiencing 

unprecedented growth. The smartphone 

applications market is booming, and 

hundreds of new apps are introduced 

every day. This growing number of services 

and devices is creating an explosive 

demand for bandwidth. 

In fact, according to a recent report 

by industry analyst Chetan Sharma of 

Chetan Sharma Consulting, total U.S. 

mobile data traffic was projected to 

exceed 1 exabyte (1 billion gigabytes) 

for the first time by the end of 2010. 

Sharma also predicted that the average 

technology 

Fiber is the optimal architecture for mobile 

backhaul in most areas. It overcomes the distance 

limitations of copper and the load sharing and 

aggregation challenges of microwave. 

U.S. consumption of mobile data would 

reach about 325 MB per month, reflecting 

a 112 percent increase from 2009. In 

the third quarter of 2010, the U.S. mobile 

data market grew 25 percent to total 

about $14 billion, thanks to continued 

heavy demand for smartphones. 

But while mobile traffic is going up, 

revenue is going down. Data now accounts 

for about 33 percent of the average 

revenue per user (ARPU) for U.S. operators. 

To minimize the cost of delivering 

these services and improve ARPU while 

providing the bandwidth scalability to 

meet future needs, mobile providers must 

switch to Ethernet-based backhaul. 

To provide sufficient bandwidth 

to smartphone users, mobile providers 

have to increase the bandwidth they deliver 

to every cell tower. Many backhaul 

technologies are in use today. Which 

one is used in any area depends on its 

geography, topology, datacom history, 

climate and population density, as well 

as the mobile operators serving the area 

and other market conditions. The technologies 

most commonly deployed are 

copper, microwave and fiber. 

Copper can provide capacity of up to 

100 Mbps but may actually deliver lower 

bandwidth and has significant distance 

limitations. The quality and reliability 

of service is dependent on how well the 

infrastructure is maintained. Scalability 

is limited, as is availability of additional 

copper. On the other hand, copper does 

support native TDM and Ethernet. 

Microwave offers very high reliability 

at a moderate cost. It can provide the 

higher bandwidth that mobile providers 

need, but its capacity is dependent 

on the distance between the antennas 

and on the topology and climate of the 

service area. 

Fiber provides the highest capacity – 

it can easily offer more than 10 Gbps per 

link over practically unlimited distance. 

The distance that the signal will carry 

without degrading is determined by the 

electronics used for the link rather than 

the medium itself, which in turn makes 

this medium future proof. It offers very 

high reliability and the ability to combine 

TDM and Ethernet. 

The optimal backhaul architecture 

solution will probably be fiber, combined 

with microwave for remote areas. 

In fact, because some fiber solutions 

actually overcome the load sharing and 

aggregation challenges experienced with 

microwave, fiber is even more effective 

for this application. 

MOBIle BACkHAul CHAllenGeS 

AnD SOlutIOnS 

Mobile backhaul involves quite a few 

challenges. Any radio access network 

generally contains multiple generations 

of cellular technologies from different 

vendors, each based on a different standard. 

Although some newer sites may 

have only the latest cellular standard, 

most existing sites maintain some remnants 

of older technology and off-load 

only data onto the new generation of 

technology. As a result, one of the most 

important requirements for backhaul solutions 

is to be able to interconnect with 

multiple generations of mobile technology 

within a site and across multiple cell 

sites, supporting multiple protocols over 

the same transport infrastructure. 

Unlike residential FTTH, in which 

each link serves only small number of 

end users, a single cell site can serve a 

very large number of end users. Network 

failure is not acceptable, and even 

small errors in backhaul provoke service 

calls. Therefore, resiliency and network 

redundancy are critical requirements. 

Newer standards, such as G.8031 

and G.8032, which allow for sub-50 


millisecond switching of a service or 

path to an alternative route once the 

quality falls below a specific threshold, 

is becoming extremely attractive to mobile 

operators. 

Cell sites, like many commercial applications, 

must support legacy T1 circuits 

for the older mobile technologies 

in many sites. Once again, providers can 

support T1 without maintaining costly 

copper connections by using pseudowire, 

circuit emulation or TDM over IP 

on fiber infrastructures. 

Finally, clock synchronization poses 

a major challenge for backhauling multiple 

cell site technologies. Although 

2G and 3G technologies typically use 

frequency-division duplex (FDD) multiplexing, 

which requires frequency 

synchronization, 4G technologies such 

as LTE and WiMAX are time-division 

multiplexed and require both frequency 

and phase synchronization. 

There are several ways to maintain 

base station timing and synchronization. 

Among the schemes commonly 

found in this market are the following: 

• IEEE 1588v2 is a packet-based protocol 

and is carried in-band with 

user traffic. It can support highly 

accurate frequency and phase synchronization 

required by 4G technologies. 

In addition, devices in the 

path that do not support 1588v2 

will transparently pass the protocol, 

eliminating the need to replace these 

devices while allowing sync requirements 

to be met. However, 1588v2 

can be affected by network congestion 

if it is not properly prioritized 

across the path. 

• Sync-E (based on ITU-T G.8261) 

is a physical layer technology and is 

not affected by network congestion. 

However it requires that every node 

in the path have hardware support 

for Sync-E. Unfortunately, Sync-E 

does not support phase synchroniza- 

technology 

Operators can support legacy T1 circuits by using 

pseudowire, circuit emulation or TDM over IP 

on their fiber infrastructures. 

tion, so in order to support 4G technologies, 

Sync-E needs to be supplemented 

by 1588v2 or some other 

mechanism to provide the phase 

synchronization requirement. 

• GPS-based synchronization uses 

timing received from satellites, 

which presents installation, reception 

and security concerns. 

Additional requirements and challenges 

include the ability to easily configure 

end-to-end services, remotely 

manage and maintain the equipment 

and monitor and report on service assurance 

using a simplified management 

solution. 

enABlInG AnD SCAlInG 

MultIPle ServICeS 

As providers deploy a wider range of 

services to mobile devices, businesses 

and homes, they need unified networks 

that support the requirements of these 

services at a cost that enables them to 

maintain, or even increase, their ARPU. 

One way to unify a multiservice 

network is through multiprotocol label 

switching (MPLS), a mechanism for 

forwarding packets based on their labels 

without having to examine the packets 

themselves. This enables multiple protocols 

and services to coexist easily – service 

providers can carry many different 

types of traffic, such as L2 Ethernet, 

supervisory control and data acquisition 

(SCADA), TDM and Asynchronous 

Transfer Mode (ATM), using the same 


transport protocol while guaranteeing 

a different service level for each service 

and each customer or endpoint. 

MPLS also offers options for carriers 

to optimize their infrastructures by 

using sophisticated management techniques 

such as VPLS and hierarchical 

VPLS (HVPLS) in the access network. 

In a LAN data network, virtual local 

area networks (VLANs) are used to 

separate different services and customers. 

However, VLANs are limited to 4K 

(4,096) per trunk and thus are not very 

scalable in a metro network in which a 

service provider may have tens of thousands 

of services and customers. To address 

this limitation, many providers are 

looking to distribute network intelligence 

outward from the core MPLS network 

and move it closer to customers. 

Placing more intelligent devices in 

the access network saves core network 

resources (CPU cycles, expensive ports 

and bandwidth), allows the network to 

scale to provide significantly more services 

to more customers, and makes the 

network more deterministic. By incorporating 

MPLS and related technologies 

such as VPLS and hierarchical quality 

of service (HQoS) into the access network, 

the network can scale to support 

up to 1 million individual services and 

customers and provide more granular 

classes of service. 

OPerAtIOnAl CHAllenGeS FOr 

MultIServICe netWOrkS 

Providers must continue to serve customers 

who are satisfied with the status 

quo as well as those who demand new 

services. Thus, they need to design networks 

that can offer both legacy-based, 

TDM services and next-generation, 

packet-based services. 

However, next-generation services 

can be difficult to manage. Even though 

Moving intelligence from the core network to the 

access network allows the network to scale to 

support up to 1 million services and customers 

and provide more granular classes of service.

Metro Ethernet standards have evolved 

to help service providers configure multivendor, 

high-bandwidth networks that 

are equipment-agnostic, they also make 

Ethernet networks more complicated 

to configure and provision. Supporting 

packet-based network services can represent 

a significant challenge for existing 

staff who may be more familiar with 

TDM or LAN networks. 

Therefore, a significant challenge is 

to simplify installation, service turn-up, 

service validation, service monitoring, 

and fault isolation and minimize the 

number of devices that must be programmed 

to turn up a new customer 

service. Sophisticated network management 

tools make this an easier task and 

create a better user experience for subscribers 

and operators alike. 

Equipment energy requirements can 

also be a large part of the overall operational 

costs of the network. The solution 

must support the features required for 

the service and do so as efficiently as 

® 

technology 

Commercial services and mobile backhaul offer 

new revenue streams from fiber infrastructure. 

The tools, products and solutions are available to 

take advantage of this opportunity. 

possible to minimize electricity usage. 

Deploying a multiservice metro 

Ethernet network requires a delicate 

balancing act between product cost and 

operational cost. Making efficient use of 

both network and personnel resources 

can minimize costs, maximize customer 

benefits and increase potential revenues. 

SuMMAry 

Commercial services and mobile backhaul 

offer a huge opportunity to use existing 

fiber infrastructure to realize new 

revenue streams. Solutions are available 

to overcome the challenges presented 

in this article, and many providers are 

already deploying them. Implementing 

MPLS at Layer 2 reduces opex and capex 

and enhances Ethernet service scalability, 

traffic engineering and robust 

network resilience by using redundant 

ring topologies with path protection. 

Other standards, such as MEF-certified 

and standards-based OAM, allow providers 

to manage, monitor and report 

adherence to customer SLAs and optimize 

network transport performance. 

The opportunity is out there, and the 

tools, products and solutions are available. 

Is your company going to take advantage 

of it? BBP 


technology 

Fundamental FttH 

Planning and Design: Part 2 

Configuration of fiber feeder routes has a great impact on deployment cost – 

and the principles aren’t at all intuitive. 

By David Stallworth ■ OFS 

Part 1 of Fundamental 

FTTH Planning and 

Design (in the January/February 

issue of Broadband 

Properties) discussed 

the positioning of central 

offices (COs), nodes, splitter 

cabinets, splitters and drop 

closures. This article focuses 

on configuring the fiber 

routes out of these facilities. 

The same study technique 

we used for positioning network 

elements can be used to 

determine the ideal configurations 

for fiber feeder routes. 

Figure 1 shows the two kinds 

of feeder cables – a main feeder, which 

originates in a CO, node or cabinet, and 

branch feeders, which terminate in a 

main feeder cable. 

Suppose a CO, node or cabinet has 

been placed in the middle of its service 

area. How many cables should come out 

of it, and how should they be routed? 

This is a very serious question, as the answer 

can significantly affect total cost. 

Figure 2 shows some possible variations 

in feeder route design. We studied 

these and other variations to determine 

the most economical configuration for 

the main and branch feeder routes. 

Figure 3 shows the ideal configuration 

we developed six years ago after extensive 

study and verified with 150,000 

homes passed. With four main feeder 

routes from the CO or node, this design 

serves an equal number of facilities on 

each route and minimizes the sum of 

the distances to customer locations. 

Figure 1: Main and Branch Feeders 

Figure 2: Possible Feeder Route Configurations 


The figure also shows 

how branch feeder routes 

should be deployed. Notice 

that they are perpendicular 

to the main feeder routes, 

not parallel to them. Paralleling 

a main route may require 

building more infrastructure 

to reach the same 

number of customers. 

SettInG BOunDArIeS 

The last item to discuss is the 

designation of boundaries between 

the feeder routes. Note 

the boundary lines exiting 

the CO at 45-degree angles 


David Stallworth is the design and product manager at OFS, a manufacturer of optical 

fiber and connectivity solutions. You can reach him at 770-798-2423 or by e-mail 

at dstallworth@ofsoptics.com.

technology 

The ideal configuration for fiber routes involves four main feeder 

routes placed at 90-degree angles to one another, with branch routes 

perpendicular to them. Of course, the real world is a little more complicated. 

to the end of the study area. 

These separate the routes 

and define which route will 

serve each customer. Placing 

boundaries allows a designer 

to identify the area served 

by each main feeder and 

makes planning for future 

demand easier. The bound- 

aries also serve to minimize 

the distance from the CO to 

each customer. 

There is no ideal number 

of branch feeder routes. 

The number used depends 

on the density and size of 

the area and sometimes 

also on whether splitters 

are centralized in cabinets 

or distributed in each PON 

area. Branch feeder routes are also determined 

by road configuration and the 

number of units served in each area. 

Generally, a single branch feeder 

should serve an area that is consistent 

in nature. For example, serving a business 

area and a residential area with two 

separate branch feeders may be a good 

idea. This requires establishing a branch 

feeder route boundary between residential 

and business areas and placing two 

branch routes with different paths from 

the main feeder into these two areas. 

However, the goal of creating uniform 

service areas must be balanced 

against the competing goal of keeping 

the total number of branch feeders low 

to minimize infrastructure and cable 

cost. Street layout further limits the 

choices for feeder routes. Good engineering 

judgment is vital in establishing 

the branch feeder routes properly. 

Locating the main feeder route relative 

to the main feeder boundaries is 

very important. Generally, the most 

economical place for a main feeder route 

is in the middle of the area it is going to 

Figure 3: Ideal Feeder Route Design 

serve. This keeps the branch feeders relatively 

short and helps reduce total length 

to the CO in the long run. 

In the same way, a branch feeder route 

should bisect the area this feeder will 

serve. Nature follows the same principle 

– a river or creek generally runs through 

the middle of the valley it drains. 

SuBDIvIDInG tHe AreAS 

Once the main feeder and branch feeder 

routes have been established along with 

the associated boundaries, the areas defined 

by the branch feeder route boundaries 

can be further divided up into 

small serving areas. These serving areas 

are defined by the size of the facilities 

that will serve them. For instance, if a 

PON technology is used and the optical 

splitters will be deployed in field cabinets, 

each branch feeder area can be divided 

into cabinet serving areas (CSA). 

Creating the CSAs may require some 

boundary adjustment so that the number 

of homes served by each cabinet is 

roughly equal. 

The size of each CSA is determined 

by the size of the cabinets to be deployed. 

(The optimum cabinet size 

for most urban areas is between 

256 and 288 homes). 

Therefore, it is important to 

determine cabinet size before 

designing CSAs. If an optical 

splitter is to be deployed 

in each 32-customer PON 

area, the area should be subdivided 

into 32-customer 

PON areas. If a switched 

Ethernet solution is to be 

deployed, the cabinets will 

not hold splitters but rather 

will act like cross boxes in 

the copper world, distributing 

and adding feeder as 

needed. In either case, once 

the cabinet size is known, 

feeder areas can be divided 

into appropriate sizes and each cabinet 

can be located in the middle of the area 

it serves. 

A tyPICAl APPlICAtIOn 

Applying the ideal configuration to an 

actual area is, of course, somewhat more 

complicated. 

The map in Figure 4 depicts the major 

portion of a town we’ll call Fiber 

City. Several items of interest show up in 

the map. First, the railroad tracks (green 

east-west lines) split the city into two 

different demographic areas. The area 

north of the tracks has a lower-income 

population in smaller living units. The 

area south of the tracks consists of the 

downtown, with commercial buildings 

and higher-end residential areas. 

The CO that serves Fiber City is located 

downtown. This location, the central 

point for terminating all the fiber, 

has ample floor space for fiber termination 

bays and associated equipment. It is 

located near the geographical center of 

the town, although the town is growing 

mainly in the south. The malls are 

located to the east of the central town 


area and are surrounded by a large commercial 

area. 

Fiber City has two other telephone 

office locations south of the downtown 

area and CO. These two office locations 

will be interconnected with the CO in a 

ring configuration. 

tHe FIBer CIty DeSIGn 

Natural and manmade structures often 

make very good boundaries for feeder 

routes. The difficulty of crossing these 

structures limits options for serving locations 

on the far side – which is true of 

the railroad tracks in Fiber City. Also, 

keeping different types of areas separate 

is useful when deployment time approaches. 

Establishing the railroad tracks as 

boundaries helped minimize the numbers 

of crossings needed except for possible 

ring configurations between feeder 

routes. The east-west routes of the railroad 

tracks in Fiber City were selected as 

route boundaries for the these reasons. 

Four feeder routes were extended 

from the downtown CO, with the 

northern route slightly bent to the right 

to take advantage of the large number of 

apartments north of a university. 

Density pulled the route in that direction, 

as the area directly north of the 

CO does not extend very far and is not 

densely populated. 

Figure 4: Fiber City Before Fiber 

technology 

The feeder route to the east extends 

into the industrial park occupied by 

several large industries. This route also 

feeds a large portion of the commercial 

area around the two malls. 

The southerly feeder route was initially 

developed in a direction directly 

Figure 5: Fiber City – The Final Design 


south of downtown but was later adjusted 

to include existing fiber routes 

and the two Fiber City telephone offices 

located in the south serving area. 

The westerly route was selected to be 

approximately in the middle of the western 

area. It extends into the rural area to 

connect to a trunk route to another city. 

Boundaries between the eastern and 

southern routes were selected to provide 

a middle break between the routes, as 

was the boundary between the southern 

and western feeder routes. The map 

in Figure 5 shows the final plan for 

Fiber City’s fiber network, which can 

ultimately serve every living unit in 

the town. 

The plan also shows the number of 

fibers needed for each main and branch 

feeder, based on the number of units 

served divided by 32. To arrive at an 

estimate of the total fiber needed, this 

base number was multiplied by 1.5 and 

added to the number of trunk fibers 

needed for connections to other towns. 

This 1.5 multiplier was requested by 

Fiber City; the appropriate multiplier 

may vary for each route, depending on 

growth assumptions. It’s a good idea to 

leGenD: 

Blue = Main feeder Light blue = Branch feeder 

Yellow = Feeder boundaries

study growth patterns for each route 

and decide how many fibers will be 

needed for new developments. The local 

governing authority may have developed 

land usage plans that can help forecast 

growth patterns for each area. 

Not all these fibers need to be placed 

at the outset – the procedure simply 

provides a way to calculate how many 

fiber cables will be needed eventually so 

the supporting infrastructure (conduit, 

handholes, aerial strand, innerduct and 

so forth) can be determined. For example, 

a company may decide to size its 

main feeder cables to last 10 to 15 years 

while sizing branch feeder cables to accommodate 

long-term growth. Budget 

limitations and engineering judgment 

can be combined to arrive at the 

best solution. 

Finally, fundamental fiber planning 

should include provisions for all types 

of future services. For example, planners 

should consider the possibility that 

high-end data users may require diverse 

You have a lot on the line with this broadband project. 

Give your project team and stakeholders the advice 

and knowledge they need to ensure success. 

Broadband business strategy expert Craig Settles delivers 

customized on-site training that puts your team on top of its 

game. He presents the inside scoop on how to: 

• identify potential subscribers you otherwise might miss 

• tackle key business tasks - from developing business 

models and partnerships to launching your network 

• generate sales and also fend off 

competitors who want to steal your sales 

• use broadband to improve local 

economic development 

technology 

Today’s FTTH platforms support both active 

Ethernet and PON from the same chassis. 

Planners should take advantage of this 

capability and use the right technology 

in the right place for the right customers. 

routes to ensure 24/7 connectivity. To 

accommodate these potential users in a 

plan developed primarily for PON service, 

including a buffer tube of 12 fibers 

or more for active Ethernet service may 

be advisable. 

A fiber ring for users that require 

redundant routes can be developed by 

connecting two branch feeders from 

two different feeder routes and sizing 

the cables properly in both routes back 

to the CO. In fact, all four main feeder 

routes can be tied together in this fashion 

to create a ring around the entire city 

fed by legs from the CO. This “multiple 

design” can take advantage of both active 

Ethernet and PON technologies. 

Today’s FTTH platforms support both 

active Ethernet and PON from the same 

chassis; planners should take advantage 

of this capability and use the right 

technology in the right place for the 

right customers. 

Fundamental planning is an important 

first step in deploying fiber in any 

area. I hope this discussion will act as a 

guide to developing a plan that will be 

viable and economical. BBP 

Give Your Broadband Project Team Wings! 

“Our expectations were clearly met, not only 

because of the high quality of the content, but also 

Mr. Settles’ presentation skills. We recommend 

Mr. Settles’ presentation services to anyone who 

is interested in broadband.” 

Rafael Anta, Senior Information and Communication 

Technology Specialist; Inter-American Development Bank 

“Craig Settles has been instrumental in helping 

our organization develop a strategy to move 

our wireless network initiative forward. He is 

very knowledgeable and his presentations have 

substance.” 

Imelda Bickham, former CIO; City of Glendale, CA 

You want a great training session? 

Call Craig Settles today at 510-536-4522! 

Get more details on his workshop topics at 

www.cjspeaks.com 

Craig Settles’ presentations always get rave reviews! 


marKeting 

Community Fiber Networks 

Succeed through Marketing 

Marketing is about more than ads and billboards, say managers of 

community broadband networks. It involves learning what customers 

expect – and meeting those expectations. 

By Craig Settles ■ Communities United for Broadband 

Marketing often means the difference 

between success and 

failure. Community broadband 

operators, including municipalities, 

nonprofits and co-ops, must understand 

early that, although serving the 

public good is a common and worthwhile 

reason for building a network, the 

network’s future is uncertain at best if 

it doesn’t generate enough revenue. Effective 

marketing is the way to generate 

that revenue. 

a student at the University of Wisconsin, 

Platteville, Rice worked as an intern 

at Genuine Telecom, a company with 

which RUC had a relationship. When 

RUC launched its network in 2003, it recruited 

Rice to take the marketing helm. 

RUC and the local government began 

exploring the option of building a 

network for this town of 9,000 while 

the utility was planning to upgrade its 

electricity service infrastructure, a project 

that began in 2000. “RUC hired a 

The controversy generated by Reedsburg’s 

decision to offer community broadband created 

public awareness of the network and forced the 

municipality to make its case to the public. 

Reedsburg, Wisc., and Jackson, 

Tenn., have done tremendous jobs marketing 

their public utility–run networks 

in the face of stiff competition and opposition 

from incumbent providers. 

Both entered the community broadband 

game quite early – 2003 and 2004, 

respectively – and definitely have earned 

the moniker “pioneers.” 

MArketInG BeGInS On DAy One 

Catherine Rice, marketing and sales 

director for Reedsburg Utility Commission 

(RUC), can honestly say her 

marketing career has grown along with 

RUC’s marketing program. In 2002, as 

marketing firm to come in and do surveys 

to see if consumers wanted another 

provider,” says Rice. 

The two main incumbent providers 

were Verizon, whose wireline assets were 

later bought by Frontier, and Charter 

Communications. “Customer feedback 

strongly supported the desire for an addi- 


tional Internet and cable provider,” Rice 

says. “RUC was building an extension 

to its electricity infrastructure, so the 

company decided to lay fiber in test beds 

simultaneously since it would be less expensive 

than building out from scratch. 

Once that buildout was completed, the 

formal marketing campaign started.” 

In many respects, however, the marketing 

began with the initial surveys. 

Rice continues, “All the discussions 

about whether to proceed were open to 

the public, and this helped a lot. The 

city council and the mayor frequently 

talked about the network, so the community 

was aware of what was coming. 

There was a lot of resistance, and RUC 

had to jump through hurdles to become 

a competitive local exchange carrier 

(CLEC). There were often questions 

about ‘should a government entity be 

providing telecom services.’ A couple of 

bills were written that tried to prevent 

the network [from being built], but the 

council decided to let this go through.” 

tHe uPSIDe OF COntrOverSy 

The controversy that exploring community 

broadband generated had two 

positive outcomes: First, it created much 

awareness through the resulting publicity, 


Craig Settles, the cofounder of Communities United for Broadband, is an industry 

analyst and broadband strategy consultant who delivers on-site training to private- 

and public-sector organizations. Follow him on Twitter (@cjsettles) and on his blog, 

Fighting the Next Good Fight (http://roisforyou.wordpress.com).

and second, the municipality and utility 

had to prove their case to the public. By 

winning support from key stakeholders 

and elected officials early on, RUC built 

a stronger position from which to market 

its broadband services. The community 

understood and supported the network 

before it was a reality. 

As the network went live in 2003, 

Rice and RUC used the pride of community 

ownership generated through 

those public discussions to fuel their 

marketing campaign. Rice says, “We 

heavily promoted the fact that we’re the 

local provider, RUC’s been here since 

1894, and we’re up front. The incumbents 

are very contract-focused. We 

avoided adding fine print and openly 

address all aspects of our services. We 

showed how our bill, when compared to 

competitors’ terms and conditions buried 

in fine print, turns out to be lower. 

Some consumers, particularly the elderly, 

had been burned by competitors’ 

contracts, so they turned to RUC.” 

eMPHASIzInG ServICe 

AnD vAlue 

Of course, a marketing campaign cannot 

rely just on the theme “We’re the 

hometown team.” It also cannot subsist 

solely on flashy ads and promotional 

materials. RUC understands that offering 

a better service is crucial. Says Rice, 

“We emphasized service and value. We 

structured our service packages to be 

similar to what the existing providers 

were offering but tweaked ours with a 

couple of new services on the cable side, 

plus more bandwidth and offerings on 

the Internet access side.” 

Regarding telephone service, RUC 

advertised great value for the price, such 

as special promotional rates and free 

installation when customers signed up. 

The broadband service that RUC offered 

while it was building out the infrastructure 

generated word-of-mouth support. 

The utility didn’t lock customers into 

three-year contracts. Rice concludes, 

“We provide a lot of education about 

what to do with our services, particularly 

for business customers. Our theory 

is that if our service isn’t good enough to 

meet your needs, you probably shouldn’t 

be a customer.” 

marKeting 

“Customers remain loyal to us because they 

believe, rightly, that RUC has customers’ 

best interests at heart.” 

As its network and marketing efforts 

mature, RUC studiously avoids getting 

drawn into price wars. “Our competitors 

tend to do a lot of price promotions 

that are unbeatable, and we can’t match 

those,” remarks Rice. “We’ve kept prices 

competitive but consistent. Our marketing 

strength comes from RUC’s credibility. 

I get on the phone sometimes with 

people who call in for customer service 

or who have a complaint. As I resolve 

their issues, I ask them, ‘Who would 

you be talking to right now if you had 

this problem with another company?’ 

Customers remain loyal to us because 

they believe, rightly, that RUC has customers’ 

best interests at heart and they 

can’t get that level of caring from companies 

whose customer service people 

are based in another country.” 

RUC used relationships with its vendors, 

including Calix, to strengthen its 

customer-centric marketing hand. “Calix 

helped us to choose the correct electronics 

to deploy that were appropriate 

for our area and our customers’ specific 

needs, and this increases our quality of 

service,” says Rice. “We were invited to 

form quite a few relationships with other 

Calix customers to generate and share 

ideas. We obtained information and 

resources regarding successful FTTH 

projects and best practices.” 

Marketing based on company credibility 

is clearly paying dividends. RUC 

is experiencing a 60 percent customer 

take rate, which is extraordinary, particularly 

given that it faces such fierce competition 

from companies many times its 

size. The utility has 2,600 customers in 

total, including 220 of the 450 businesses 

in the community. 

nO MOre Mr. nICe AnD FluFFy 

When it comes to marketing, “You 

can’t be a nice, fluffy businessperson,” 

says Michael Johnston, vice president of 

IT and broadband for Jackson Energy 

Authority (JEA) in Tennessee. As he 

learned through rough experience, “You 

need to do a gut check. Are you ready to 

do the things to take a community network 

operation where it needs to be?” 

Like Reedsburg, Jackson (population 

76,000) began its drive for community 

broadband amid controversy that 

arose when incumbents objected to the 

network and sued JEA. Publicity during 

this controversy helped the public utility 

build local political support as well 

as word-of-mouth stakeholder support 

for the network, so it was able to begin 

selling services in 2004, the same year it 

starting building the network. 

JEA launched its network with all 

marketing guns blazing. Johnston recalls, 

“We were doing everything: paper, 

radio, novelties, billboards. We retained 

a local marketing firm to help. In the 

beginning, our message and the strategy 

was all about ‘Come here, come here!’ 

Our marketing message was focused on 

customer acquisition, hitting heavily on 

the theme of price, the convenience of 

one bill and the fact we had an unbelievable 

fiber-to-the-home network.” 

Although JEA enjoys the benefit of 

being the hometown broadband team, 

Jackson is a fairly large market that eventually 

required JEA to add more depth 

to its marketing strategy. Johnston continues, 

“When people in local government 

say ‘marketing,’ they often think 

only of the pretty stuff – ads, billboards, 

flyers. Most Chambers of Commerce 

are all about marketing the community, 

but this isn’t the kind of marketing that 

makes a triple-play [voice, video, Internet 

data] service successful.” 

The kind of marketing that drives a 

telecom company to success entails not 

only marketing communications but also 

the creation of a product mix that appeals 

to prospects while generating a profit. 

JEA has reworked its entire service lineup 

over the past few years. It continues to 

change the marketing mix frequently, 


offering more speeds, more HD channels 

and even some channels for free. 

Customer service, as always, is a major 

component of the marketing effort. 

Leveraging the fact that it is not a forprofit 

entity trying to return as much as 

possible to the investors, JEA can give 

customers a greater level of support and 

much higher quality of service than its 

competitors do. For example, JEA offers 

same-day repair service with a four-hour 

window for arrival and next-day service 

with a two-hour window. 

Marketing also entails business development 

through building partnerships 

with various private, public and 

nonprofit organizations. When it explored 

the possibility of pursuing broadband 

stimulus money to expand its 

network, JEA decided that partnerships 

with several communities would be vital 

not only for winning a grant but also 

for successfully marketing the expanded 

network if it won the grant. Closing 

such deals requires crafting a consistent 

marketing message about the value of 

the partnerships themselves. 

“To make something like this work 

across a region, you may have to deal 

with nine or 10 different utility companies 

and several town councils one at a 

time,” says Johnston. “Your pitch to get 

them on board is going to come down 

to presenting quite a few intangible benefits, 

such as better quality of life and 

more efficient government services. But 

when we met with potential partners, we 

emphasized the part of our plan with the 

greatest tangible benefit – using broadband 

in health care and education.” 

tHe COSt OF SuCCeSS 

As JEA’s broadband business grew, it had 

to face the fact that its marketing was 

too successful. This seems so counterintuitive 

that few organizations may even 

marKeting 

Marketing can be too successful. If too many 

new customers sign up too quickly, network 

operations can implode under the weight of 

unbudgeted customer care requirements, 

including installation and support. 

consider the possibility. However, if marketing 

generates too many new customers 

too quickly, network operations can 

implode under the weight of unbudgeted 

customer care requirements. 

Success literally has a cost in terms 

of the installation, customer service and 

technical support that must take place 

before customers begin paying monthly 

fees. JEA discovered quickly that, in 

Johnston’s words, “We screwed this up.” 

The number of incoming subscribers 

was so far above sales projections that 

JEA had to cut back drastically on future 

growth. The company has recovered 

from this setback and continues to 

do well in the face of a constant marketing 

barrage from competitors. 

Johnston believes there are so many 

marketing tasks to master, and competition 

is so intense, that community 

broadband networks must be tough, 

creative and agile in their marketing 

execution. Because community broadband 

is still such a young movement, 

there are only two practical ways to accomplish 

this, Johnson believes. “You 

need to either ‘buy’ telecom marketing 

expertise by hiring someone who used 

to work for a Comcast or a Verizon, or 

acquire it through brute force learning, 

trial and error.” 

tIPS FOr MArketInG 

BrOADBAnD ServICeS 

Reedsburg, Jackson and other communities 

offer several good lessons to 

broadband marketing teams. 

• Execute a good survey during the 

needs assessment. That will generate 

the market knowledge needed to 

create an effective marketing strategy. 

In fact, if you ask all stakeholder 

groups (businesses, schools, medi- 


cal facilities, and so forth) the right 

questions, they will tell you just how 

to market to them. 

• Begin building market awareness 

from the moment you decide to explore 

a broadband network. Even 

if your network project is delayed, 

you’ll have a good feel for the potential 

depth of support when you eventually 

move forward. 

• Do not let critics define your broadband 

marketing messages. Know how 

broadband’s capabilities can impact 

various stakeholder groups before 

you start, and craft your central message 

around these outcomes. You can 

change how you say it, but keep the 

core message the same so you maximize 

every marketing dollar spent. 

• As much as possible, segment marketing 

messages, promotions and 

offers to motivate specific audiences 

effectively. “We market a general 

package to consumers, businesses 

get specialized offers such as for Web 

hosting and static IP addresses, and 

our large population of elderly who 

are snowbirds are billed only for their 

time here at home,” states Rice. 

• Be prepared to continuously repel 

marketing assaults from competitors 

without fighting a price war. Use 

your organization’s smaller size to 

your marketing advantage. Be creative 

and nimble, know your marketing 

strength (it isn’t always what you 

think it is) and play to that strength. 

• When partnering for marketing 

advantage, fully understand your 

partners’ marketing and other business 

needs. Without sacrificing your 

primary objectives for your network, 

continually try to contribute to their 

marketing success. 

• Remember that political support is 

crucial to generating subscribers. It 

gives you the marketing strength to 

launch the project effectively and 

marketing momentum that increases 

sales. Involve elected officials early 

in developing your marketing messages, 

and continuously update them 

on your successes. Their comments 

reinforce the messages and amplify 

the positive word-of-mouth that happens 

within the community. BBP

Burlington Telecom, the community-owned 

network in Burlington, 

Vt., has been in the news recently 

because of its financial problems. 

As more information emerges about the 

causes of Burlington Telecom’s problems, 

other community broadband networks 

should seize the opportunity to 

learn from those mistakes. 

Although some critics argue that 

high-profile problem projects “prove” 

community broadband is a failure, in 

reality the private-sector telecom industry 

has been littered with failures, 

collapses and mergers – does Adelphia 

ring a bell? Still, despite decades of private-sector 

problems, no one argues that 

those problems “prove” the incumbents 

should be shut down. 

The good news is that community 

broadband projects starting up now 

should have a much higher probability 

of success than the pioneer efforts of the 

last 20 years. In this article, I identify 

some of the “worst practices” that have 

emerged from a wide variety of community 

broadband efforts. These problems 

fall into three major categories: 

• Management deficiencies show up 

frequently in both large and small 

projects. 

• Poor financial decisions can be 

linked to inexperience with manag- 

community broaDbanD 

Worst Practices 

In Community Broadband 

Mistakes community broadband networks make – and how to avoid them. 

By Andrew Michael Cohill, Ph.D. ■ Design Nine Inc. 

ing complex business enterprises. 

• If there is a weak point of the openaccess 

business model, it is inadequate 

marketing based on the assumption 

that service providers will 

handle that function. 

MAnAGeMent PrOBleMS 

Letting the network run itself 

Some project organizers do initial planning 

and fundraising very well but fail 

to follow through with strategic and 

tactical planning. This problem is most 

common when boards of directors have 

limited experience managing large enterprises. 

It also occurs in projects that were 

started primarily with grant funds. One 

benefit of the ARRA broadband stimulus 

effort was an emphasis on developing 

an eight-year financial pro forma. 

Setting financial targets and then 

measuring progress against those targets 

is critically important, as is adjusting the 

pro forma at least once a year to match 

actual revenue, expenses and income. 

Overstaffing 

Community broadband start-ups have 

to control costs carefully until enough 

subscribers are buying services to get the 

effort into the black operationally. Overstaffing 

is often a byproduct of putting 

former telco managers in charge. Their 

experience in big companies with large 

middle-management staffing plans does 


Andrew Michael Cohill, Ph.D., is the president of Design Nine (www.designnine. 

com), which provides broadband network design and network buildout services. 

Specializing in open-access network design, Design Nine has been involved in such 

“best practice” projects as nDanville, The Wired Road and Palm Coast FiberNET. 


not translate well to community broadband 

networks. 

Another reason community networks 

need fewer staff than equivalent 

incumbent operations is that their 

brand-new networks do not have the 

overhead or complexity of legacy copperbased 

coaxial and twisted-pair systems. 

Staffing too soon 

Staffing is a difficult challenge for startup 

networks. Even a small network 

needs a certain base level of skills and 

expertise, and identifying one or even 

two people who can wear all the necessary 

hats – management, marketing, 

network operations, outside-plant 

maintenance, financial oversight and 

customer support – can be difficult. As a 

result, some projects hire too many people 

before the revenue can justify the associated 

salaries, benefits and overhead. 

Boards of directors of community 

broadband projects have to be prepared 

to lend some hands-on assistance in the 

first year or two to help ameliorate having 

too many or too few staff members. 

Board members should be selected carefully 

based on specific expertise they can 

bring the enterprise, such as marketing 

experience, financial management or 

construction expertise. A well-crafted 

board of directors can help fill the gaps 

until revenue justifies hiring more workers 

with specialized skills. 

Another approach is to outsource 

some activities temporarily instead of 

hiring full-time staff. For example, outsourcing 

network operations for a year 

or two until the subscriber base grows 

may be less expensive than hiring a network 

operations specialist.

A private-sector firm that manages 

business, institutional or other private 

networks can allocate a portion of one 

person’s time to the community network 

so the network does not have to 

pay a full-time staffer. 

Maintenance of outside plant (fiber 

cable, wireless equipment, splicing) can 

also be outsourced to a qualified firm 

with equipment, trucks and trained 

staff. When a network grows to several 

thousand customers, bringing operations 

and maintenance in-house becomes 

less expensive. 

Hiring the wrong manager 

One of the “worst practices” I see is 

filling senior management positions 

without making sure candidates have a 

solid understanding of the fundamentals 

of community broadband networks. 

The business model and the approach 

to designing network infrastructure 

in community-owned networks differ 

from those in telcos. The open-access 

approach, coupled with a need to run 

a very lean operation for two or three 

years, requires an entrepreneurial, 

hands-on management approach. 

A common hiring error is to look for 

managers with telco or cable company 

experience on the theory that “they know 

telecom.” However, experience with a 

large incumbent telco or cable company 

does not always translate into the right 

work skills for a start-up. 

Telephone and cable companies tend 

to be big, high-dollar operations with 

high staff counts, high overhead and big 

expense budgets. Too often, the highbudget 

mindset may linger, and taking 

someone with a big company background 

and putting him or her in charge 

of an essentially entrepreneurial start-up 

is a recipe for – well, cost overruns. 

The first hire for a community network 

should be selected with great care. 

Getting help writing the job description 

and developing the list of roles and responsibilities 

may be useful. 

Getting assistance with interviewing 

candidates may also be wise, as their 

technical and business abilities may vary 

widely. Interviewers who can ask the 

right questions can help boards select 

the best-qualified candidates. 


The financial records of a community network 

should be maintained completely separate from 

the rest of the parent organization. 

POOr FInAnCIAl DeCISIOnS 

Spending in advance of revenue 

Although overstaffing is the easiest way 

to spend too much, start-up projects 

can easily bust their budgets with unnecessary 

operational expenses. Startups 

should look for donated or low-cost 

office space, borrowed or budget office 

furnishings and even borrowed phone 

and Internet services. 

I suspect that some ARRA-funded 

stimulus projects will make this mistake. 

The broadband stimulus grants 

can be used only for capital expenditures, 

so the first year of operations must 

be planned carefully to ensure that overall 

operational expenses don’t outrun 

projected (and actual) revenue. 

Spending capex funds on opex 

Managers of some bond-funded projects 

have learned, painfully, that spending 

money budgeted for capital expenditures 

on operational expenses is not a 

good idea. Do so long enough, and a 

death spiral occurs in which the network 

no longer has enough funds to 

construct connections to new customers. 

Without enough customers, there is 

no way to generate enough revenue to 

cover operational costs and the interest 

and principal payments on debt. 

Overreliance on grants 

This lesson was one of the first to emerge 

from the early round of community 

networking efforts in the 1990s. Many 

good projects eventually failed because 

project leaders incorrectly assumed that 

grants could be used to fund their efforts 

indefinitely. In project after project, 

grant funds eventually became scarce, 

and the lack of long-term, sustainable 

financial strategies led to the demise of 

many efforts. 

Grant funds play important roles in 

helping get projects off the ground and 

helping existing networks expand, but 

a solid business plan based on realistic 

assumptions about revenue, operational 

costs, the cost of debt and the cost of 

expansion is critical. 

Financial transparency and 

poor accounting 

Some community projects have run into 

difficulty because of poor accounting 

practices. Community networks are not 

like most other community-focused nonprofits. 

A community-owned broadband 

network is a business first, and a tight focus 

on financial management is essential. 

Even if the aim is not to make a 

profit, a wide-area network is a complex 

undertaking that requires all the typical 

bookkeeping activities of any privatesector 

business, including accounts payable, 

accounts receivable, cash management 

and budgeting. Some municipal 

broadband project funds have been commingled 

with local government general 

funds – which can make determining 

the financial state of a network difficult. 

The financial records of a community 

network should be maintained 

completely separate from the rest of 

the parent organization. For a municipally 

owned project, this means using a 

mechanism such as an enterprise fund. 

For a regional project, it may mean creating 

a regional authority, a co-op or 

some other independent entity. 

Any broadband project established to 

serve a region’s broader community and 

economic development goals must be 

completely transparent about its financial 

records. The public should be provided 

with regular financial reports that 

show the sources of all funds and how 

those funds are being spent. 

POOr MArketInG DeCISIOnS 

Failing to use take-rate commitments 

to guide construction and buildout 

I can say with some certainty that the 

“if we build it, they will come” business 

model does not work. Several projects 

have gotten into difficult financial 

straits by starting at one end of the service 

territory and building fiber to the 


other end without doing the market 

research to determine whether they can 

meet their take-rate targets. They usually 

don’t, and if a project gets only a 10 

percent or 15 percent take rate, it is almost 

certainly because it did not match 

demand with its buildout plans. 

An essential step is to organize the 

proposed service area into buildout 

footprints and assign a take-rate target 

for each footprint. Once this is done, a 

marketing effort is needed to obtain purchase 

commitments of some kind, such 

as take or pay, local tax bond guarantees, 

binding preservice purchase commitments 

or connection-fee commitments. 

No construction should be started 

in a footprint until the take-rate target 

commitments are reached. This approach 

ensures that, on day one of network 

operations, enough customers will 

buy services to cover capital costs and 

operational costs. 

Not enough marketing 

Overreliance on service providers to 

handle marketing is one of the most 

For residents: 

• Payment flexibility (Use of credit 

card, debit card or coins) 

• Online access ine 

availability with LaundryView ® 

• Text message when cycle 

is done 


common mistakes in open-access networks. 

Community broadband efforts 

need well-run, ongoing marketing and 

public awareness campaigns. Projects 

that have trouble meeting financial targets 

almost all lack good marketing. 

The great advantage of open-access 

networks for service providers is that 

they need to make only small capital 

investments to offer services to customers 

on the network. However, this advantage 

can become a weakness; some 

providers, because they have invested 

little, spend little to attract customers. 

Instead, they are happy to pick up a few 

easy sales and then sit back and do little 

or nothing in the way of marketing. 

The network operator must ensure 

that residents and businesses are aware 

that the network exists, that they know 

what providers and services are available 

and that they know how to contact providers 

and order services. It may sound 

like Marketing 101, but some open-access 

networks are failing that class. 


SuMMAry 

Community-owned broadband is not 

going to replace large telcos and cable 

companies; on the contrary, most openaccess 

networks want their local incumbent 

providers to use community infrastructure 

to market and deliver services 

such as telephone, TV and Internet. 

Arguing that communities should stay 

out of telecom amounts to saying, “Stick 

with 20th-century business models that 

have not always met broadband needs of 

communities in the United States.” 

True, some pioneer community 

broadband projects have had problems. 

However, the opponents of community 

broadband have nothing to offer except, 

“Stick with what we know has failed.” A 

better approach is “Let’s try some new 

models and learn what works.” 

Projects such as Burlington Telecom, 

even if they disappoint their own communities, 

are useful in the long run. 

They provide valuable best-practice information 

for all the community projects 

that come after them. BBP 

Digital laundry is here. TM 

Change Point. ® The next generation in laundry payment. 

Change Point ® is a revolutionary Internet-enabled payment and monitoring system that offers 

benefits for both residents and property management. Only from Mac-Gray. 

booTh 

#312 

For property managers: 

• Affordable alternative to “coin only” 

and laundry card systems 

• Access to comprehensive service 

and financial reporting 

• Self-diagnostic machines 

• Increased resident satisfaction 

To see a short video on the 

many benefits of Change Point ® 

and learn more, visit 

www.macgray.com/changepoint. 

1-888-MAC-GRAY

New FTTH Market Review 

and Forecast 

There has never been a more 

important time for an FTTH 

market review and forecast! 

Where will the North American 

FTTH market go next? Who will 

be deploying fiber in the future? 

The most recent RVA report 

provides a very detailed overview 

of the history, current status, 

and societal impact of FTTH. 

Most importantly, it offers 

extremely detailed forecasts of 

homes passed, marketed, and 

connected by major segments 

such as RBOCs, ILECs, CLECs, 

Municipalities, MSOs, and Real 

Estate Integrators. Additionally, the 

report provides forecasts by dwelling type (single family 

versus MDU), technical architecture, by region and much more! 

The current RVA forecast, first released in 2010, has been very 

accurate and should provide good guidance for the next four 

years in helping you set strategies, forecast revenue, evaluate 

investments, and understand all aspects of the market. 

www.RVALLC.com 

800-619-3102

Service management SyStemS 

Building a Nationwide 

Open-access Network 

A Swedish network operator grows revenues and reduces operating 

expenses with an automated service management system. 

By Ronald Corriveau ■ COS Systems 

network operators need to design 

operations and management 

systems that are tailored 

to their particular networks and that 

meet the needs of their service providers 

and subscribers. This is the story of how 

Quadracom, a Swedish network operator, 

scaled its regional network to provide 

coverage in more than 40 cities and 

rural areas and added dozens of services 

and providers while reducing head count 

and improving customer satisfaction. 

The key to such cost-efficient growth is 

to develop a service-driven network. 

As an open-access network operator, 

Quadracom deploys next-generation 

services to its subscribers and its network 

of competitive service providers. 

It manages dozens of municipal FTTH 

networks all over Sweden, delivering 

secure access for service providers and 

subscribers. 

Although Quadracom is not a household 

brand in the communities it serves, 

many local, regional and national service 

providers offer branded services, such as 

Internet access, VoIP and IPTV, over the 

networks it manages. 

Quadracom’s network serves more 

than 40 municipalities, 110,000 residential 

customers and 1,000 business customers. 

Almost half its 22 service providers 

offer Internet access with speeds 

that range from 1 Mbps to 1 Gbps, with 

various support options and pricing 

plans. Several providers offer multiplay 

services with bundled discounts. 

As Quadracom grew, it faced the 

challenge of scaling its network without 

proportionally increasing its manage- 

ment costs. Staffing reductions became 

necessary to maintain profitability. To 

meet the needs of its ever-growing network, 

Quadracom invested in software 

to manage subscribers and providers. 

However, its early investments in management 

software did not achieve the 

cost reductions or operational efficiencies 

it required. 


securely manage the network infrastructure, 

their services and their subscribers. 

In addition, the company wanted to offer 

a service marketplace where network 

subscribers could shop for and select the 

services they wanted and have them activated 

immediately. A subscriber using 

such a marketplace would not have to 

call a salesperson during business hours 

Service providers’ time to market is reduced 

from days to just minutes. They no longer have 

to request the network operator’s assistance to 

activate customers or manage services. 

Although Quadracom dramatically 

reduced its staffing requirements, it was 

still faced with high personnel costs and 

too many manual processes. Adding 

new services and service providers took 

way too much time and effort. To effectively 

grow its services, subscriber base 

and average revenue per user (ARPU), 

Quadracom undertook a more intensive 

automation initiative to enable its service 

providers to manage as much of the 

process as possible. 

Quadracom decided to implement a 

solution that would let service providers 

or wait for a technician for routine service 

activation, moves and changes. 

Jan Söderholm, the chief technical 

officer of Quadracom, realized he needed 

to implement more automation and selfservice 

capabilities in his operations. As 

Söderholm sums up the situation, “Our 

management software was a real mess 

and was just not able support our service 

providers and support our staff or customers 

the way we wanted it to.” 

Despite having already invested in 

management solutions, Söderholm realized 

that if the network he wanted to 


Ronald Corriveau is the vice president of business development at COS Systems. You 

can reach him at 617-274-8171 or by email at ron.corriveau@cossystems.com.

Service management SyStemS 

build was going to succeed, he needed 

a solution far more powerful than what 

he had. The solution would have to be 

Web-based, secure and capable of supporting 

greater automation in all key 

aspects of managing services, service 

providers and subscribers. The most important 

requirement was to be able to 

manage the software in Quadracom’s 

data centers throughout Sweden from a 

single location. 

With these needs in mind, Quadracom 

began to search for a solution that 

would meet all its needs today and provide 

a foundation that would support its 

future growth plans. It identified several 

important features. The solution would 

have to 

• allow service providers to manage 

and support their service activations, 

services and customers without assistance 

from Quadracom except for 

network outages 

• enable network subscribers to browse 

and order available services from any 

service provider on the network by 

using a simple Web portal tailored 

for each network being managed 

• provide an easy-to-use billing feature 

that would enable customers to enter 

billing information once and share 

it with service providers and billing 

parties on the network and that 

could support the many different 

billing models in place across all the 

networks under management 

• deliver 24/7 availability with faulttolerant 

and redundant capabilities 

to ensure that the service marketplace 

and management portals were 

continuously available for network 

subscribers, service providers and 

operations staff. 

After looking for proven products 

that could meet all its needs, Quadracom 

determined that COS System’s 

product, COS, offered all the capabilities 

it desired. Quadracom awarded 

COS Systems a contract to conduct a pilot 

deployment on its network to verify 

that the COS solution would in fact deliver 

all the capabilities it needed. 

The pilot project proved to Quadracom 

and its service providers that COS 

enabled them to manage everything 

they needed between their data centers 

and their subscribers. Quadracom’s 

service providers saw the benefits from 

COS immediately. 

Söderholm says, “Once our service 

providers saw we could totally automate 

the sale and instantly activate the 

services their subscribers ordered, they 

were hooked! It is the perfect solution 

for our needs and exactly what they 

had been asking for. We experienced an 

immediate reduction in the number of 

calls needed between the service provider, 

subscriber and our staff and cut 

the service delivery time from days to 

just a few minutes in most cases. Our 

service providers were happy because 

this accelerated their time to revenue.” 

Using the COS best practices deployment 

methodology implemented in the 

pilot project, COS Systems and Quadracom 

deployed COS management to 

the entire network in less than 90 days. 

Once the deployment was complete, 

service providers and subscribers had a 

secure and easy-to-use model to order 

and deliver network services. Accessing 

services using COS is as easy as 1, 2, 3: 

1 Go to an easy-to-use Web portal to 

shop for services, learn about service 

and provider options and make 

selections. 

2 Enter address and billing information 

once and have it securely delivered 

to service providers. 

3 Sit back, wait a few minutes and enjoy 

the new services. 

leSSOnS leArneD At 

quADrACOM 

Söderholm comments, “The only way we 

could profitably manage the Quadracom 

network was to slash our cost of operating 

our 22 municipal networks. By centralizing 

and consolidating all the operations 

into a single network operating center, we 

were able to cut staffing costs and implement 

a high degree of automation in our 

network. Our service providers could 

easily and securely manage their customers 

while we managed the network and 

service providers. COS enabled us to dramatically 

improve the economics of our 

network by lowering operational costs 

and increasing ARPU by offering more 

services at competitive prices.” 

He adds, “Implementing COS on 

our network gave us the ability to leverage 

automation, self-service provisioning 

of services from multiple providers 

and simplify billing to network subscribers. 

By lowering our management 

costs and improving ARPU, we were 

able to build a powerful, secure and easily 

managed network with competitive 

services and prices.” 

ServICe PrOvIDerS BeneFIt 

Service providers also realize benefits 

from doing business with larger networks 

where they have a larger customer base 

and where they can focus their marketing 

resources. Providing services on a regional 

or national network can dramatically 

reduce the marginal cost of service 

delivery, billing integration, customer 

acquisition and new service creation. 

One provider on the Quadracom 

network says, “COS makes it easy for 

us to offer our services by simplifying 

the integration of our service ordering, 

billing and operations systems onto the 

networks where we offer services. On 

networks that use COS, we can offer a 

new service in hours instead of weeks 

and achieve higher ARPU with lower 

management costs.” 

The provider adds, “New service orders 

arrive electronically and contain everything 

we need to enable services for 

customers. Their addresses and network 

services are added to the network outlets 

in their homes or businesses, along with 

the information we need to bill them, 

making it easy to integrate them into 

our order management, service management 

and billing systems. The level of 

effort required to offer services on networks 

managed by COS is helping us 

drive our growth strategy. We are eager 

to offer our services on COS-managed 

networks because they are easier to 

manage and more profitable.” 

Since deploying COS, Quadracom 

has accelerated its efforts to expand its 

customer base. Now that it can manage 

additional networks, it can benefit from 

the wider choice of services and providers 

that COS enables without increasing 

its operational staff. BBP 


F i n a n c i a l a p p l i c at i o n s 

The Low-Latency 

Service Opportunity 

Financial trading firms, whose profits depend on entering trades 

ahead of competitors, lead the demand for low-latency network service. 

Other industries will follow them soon. Service providers need to 

prepare their networks to meet this demand. 

By Brian Quigley ■ ADVA Optical Networking 

In certain key markets, service 

providers are finding that latency 

– the length of time a 

packet of information takes to 

get from one point to another – 

is an increasingly important competitive 

differentiator. Even better, the differentiation 

is measurable, and customers 

in the relevant markets tend to be both 

sensitive to the value of the difference 

and willing to pay for it. 

Capitalizing on the low-latency 

opportunity, however, requires an approach 

to building optical infrastructure 

that is different from what service 

providers use to support traditional corporate 

networks. How can service providers 

segment the low-latency market 

and differentiate their offerings? 

How Low Can You Go? 

Deploying state-of-the-art network interface 

cards, high-capacity core network 

switches and multicore servers is 

not sufficient to satisfy certain industries’ 

need for networking speed. The 

most delay-sensitive of applications, 

such as gaming, video, business continuity 

and, especially, electronic financial 

trading, need low latency as well. 

For innovative algorithmic-trading 

strategies, such as high-frequency trading, 

that have grown prevalent in segments 

of the financial industry, latency 

is absolutely critical. In algorithmic trading, 

automated buy and sell orders are 

driven by a computer model’s predefined 

set of rules for interpreting information 

feeds from around the world – share 

price and volume data from multiple exchanges, 

labor statistics from many markets, 

news reports and so forth. 

Since algorithmic and other forms 

of electronic trading took off in the late 

1990s, the competitive jockeying among 

firms has evolved. First, these firms 

tasked mathematicians with adjusting 

the computer models to better predict 

how markets might respond to various 


Brian Quigley is the senior director for strategic global account development at ADVA 

Optical Networking, a global provider of telecommunications equipment that specializes 

in carrier and enterprise Ethernet optical transport. He can be reached at 

bquigley@advaoptical.com. 

Winners and losers in electronic-trading 

races are separated by mere nanoseconds. 

This has made them hypersensitive to network 

latency and focused industry attention on 

connectivity between exchanges. 


events. Next, they deployed more powerful 

servers and more powerful switches 

to connect the servers. The more quickly 

a firm can receive and parse incoming 

data and churn out orders, the better, 

because the first trade to market gets the 

best price. 

Today, after making these improvements, 

winners and losers in electronictrading 

races are separated by mere 

nanoseconds. This has made them hypersensitive 

to network latency and has, 

in turn, focused industry attention on 

connectivity between exchanges. The 

most meaningful competitive advantages 

in the ability to receive information 

and get orders to market now come 

from fiber optic transport links. 

For service providers, this trend has 

translated into an influx of requests for ultra-low-latency 

connections to and from 

trading venues, information sources, colocation 

facilities and international landing 

points for submarine cable. Proper 

segmenting, targeting and positioning 

are critical to standing out against the 

competition and winning business in the 

valuable electronic-trading space.

THe MarkeT for 

eLeCTroniC TradinG 

Two industry segments that are most enthusiastic 

about low-latency connection 

services are investment banks and proprietary 

trading firms. They are different 

types of businesses, but their needs for 

low-latency service offerings are similar. 

Investment banks primarily help 

corporations and governments raise capital. 

However, many of them provide additional 

services, such as market making 

and trading for various asset classes. Latency 

matters most to the departments 

in charge of these additional services. 

Proprietary trading firms tend 

to be much smaller than investment 

banks, and they trade with their own 

money rather than with their customers’ 

money. They use a variety of trading 

strategies, such as statistical arbitrage, 

index arbitrage and volatility arbitrage 

and, in some cases, they make markets. 

These firms are very quick to make connectivity 

decisions and often change 

connectivity methods quickly as new 

latency innovations come to the market. 

A key trend impacting electronic 

trading is exchange fragmentation, particularly 

in Europe and Asia. As recently 

as 15 years ago, investment banks and 

trading firms might have focused on as 

few as two exchanges, the New York 

Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. Today, 

financial markets are fragmented among 

hundreds of trading venues globally, and 

a stock may be listed in many venues. 

This fragmentation is part of the reason 

investment banks and trading firms 

have invested so heavily in electronic 

trading and in their capabilities for exploiting 

arbitrage opportunities. The 

companies must optimize their connections 

and gain local strategic intelligence 

to enter their targeted markets fast and 

smart. To do this, they must first differentiate 

between the traffic to carry 

on their traditional, corporate networks 

and the traffic to carry on their trading 

networks. 

For carriers, the methods and best 

practices appropriate for designing 

general-purpose networks cannot simply 

be applied to trading networks or they 

will not achieve latencies low enough to 

succeed in electronic trading. 


Investment banks and trading firms are typically 

willing to pay large premiums for low-latency 

services because they have experienced the 

negative impact on their take rate of trades when 

networks are not optimized to deliver low latency. 

Financial firms grasp the necessity 

of this distinction very quickly because 

they have experienced the negative impact 

on their take rate of trades when 

the optical network infrastructures that 

underlie their electronic-trading processes 

are not optimized to deliver low 

latency. The good news for service providers 

that can convey the value of and 

deliver specialized low-latency services is 

that investment banks and trading firms 

are typically willing to pay large premiums 

for services that can meet their exacting 

needs. 

differenTiaTinG an offerinG 

Though dozens of microseconds (millionths 

of a second) in latency can be 

eliminated by properly optimizing any 

network, low latency is not a commodity 

service. Some manufacturers’ systems 

deliver a differentiating competitive 

advantage, and some do not – and innovation 

in the underlying technologies 

is ongoing and rapidly paced. The state 

of the art for low-latency connectivity 

along the Chicago-to-New York trading 

route, for example, has been shaved by 

multiple milliseconds (thousandths of a 

second) over the last year alone. 

The winning service providers in the 

electronic-trading market, whether they 

offer fully managed, dim/fractional 

wavelength or dark-fiber services, will be 

those that prepare their networks explicitly 

for the low-latency opportunity. The 

first step is to reduce the path from point 

A to point B, as shortening an exchangeto-exchange 

route by one physical mile 

of fiber equates to a five-microsecond 

improvement in round-trip latency. 

Going still further to achieve the 

game-changing, ultra-low latencies that 

investment banks and trading firms will 

pay most for requires revisiting preconceptions 

about optical networks and 

taking a deep dive into their key functions. 

Broadband providers might use 

the same fiber paths as their competitors, 

but, if they use time-division multiplexing 

(TDM) on the links, for example, 

they lose the low-latency customer. 

Relying on forward error correction to 

transmit optical signals across long distances 

is valuable for some applications, 

but it also feeds latency, as does deploying 

spools and spools of dispersioncompensating 

fiber (DCF). 

Many difference-making pockets of 

delay can be eliminated by reexamining 

the functions and techniques commonly 

used to transport customer traffic across 

glass networks. 

• Multiplexing – Combining lowerspeed 

traffic signals to a higherspeed 

network port using TDM entails 

processing that produces several 

microseconds of latency – enough 

to lose the low-latency game. The 

better approach is to carry signals 

on separate channels of light via 

wavelength-division multiplexing 

(WDM), creating dedicated paths 

for multiple types of traffic across the 

same fiber and yielding much lower 

latencies. Within the array of available 

WDM solutions, though, there 

are still major differences among 

manufacturers, and strategic choices 

need to be made. Systems that use 

thin-film filters, for example, inject 

unnecessary delay in varying increments, 

depending on the color of the 

wavelength carrying the traffic. As a 

result, carriers that use these systems 

not only have slower transmission 

but also must specify a different latency 

for each wavelength. 

• Color conversion – In a WDM 

system, the traffic for each customer 

is converted, or transponded, to a 



Electronic trading is likely to bring heightened 

latency sensitivity to such mainstream applications 

as Internet gaming, video, and business 

continuity. Service providers should make sure 

they are well-positioned for these opportunities. 

particular color of light. Significant 

latency may be associated with this 

conversion. Emergent low-latency 

transponders carry out the process 

in single-digit nanoseconds. Again, 

there are major differences among 

technologies, and carriers must pay 

attention to transponder latency. 

• Amplification – Erbium-doped fiber 

amplifiers (EDFAs), which are 

frequently used to boost weakening 

optical signals along fiber routes, can 

be sources of delay. Some common 

architectures – high-gain, dual-stage 

EDFAs, for example – can inject 

microseconds of delay. On a longdistance 

route that links exchanges 

in two different cities, the performance 

impact is intolerable for electronic 

trading. Latency-optimized 

EDFAs perform amplification in 

half as much time, and counter and 

copropagating RAMAN amplifiers 

(used instead of EDFAs) have shown 

their ability to shrink amplification 

latency by a factor of 16. 

• Dispersion compensation – DCF is 

a commonly used tool for offsetting 

signal degradation that results from 

chromatic dispersion (the broadening 

of an input signal as it travels 

down a length of fiber). High-speed 

signals, such as 10 Gbps, tend especially 

to smear across the spectrum 

of wavelengths as they travel over 

long distances in a strand of optical 

fiber. Augmenting networks with kilometers 

of DCF counters the effect, 

but it also produces latency that electronic 

traders cannot afford. Fiber 

Bragg gratings can be used to offset 

chromatic dispersion without introducing 

the delays DCF causes. 

• Regeneration – Optical signals require 

regeneration in addition to 

amplification if they are to maintain 


their performance over longer connections. 

As with the other functions, 

traditional techniques are not suitable 

for low-latency applications. Optimized 

technology, however, slashes 

regeneration delay from hundreds of 

microseconds to mere nanoseconds. 

ConCLusion 

Financial firms will continue to tweak 

their algorithms and back-office systems 

to more quickly detect and act on anomalies 

across markets, and these tweaks 

will continue to deliver gains. However, 

their systems have been optimized to 

such a level that such adjustments might 

yield latency gains of only fractions of 

a microsecond. By paying attention to 

exchange-to-exchange connectivity, service 

providers can not only help their 

trading-firm customers become winners 

in the low-latency financial markets but 

also remove themselves from the commodity-based 

transport game. 

Financial customers are seeking partners 

with the global presence and experience 

(understanding of local integration 

and fiber-route information, for example) 

to allow them to start trading anywhere 

business takes them. Having already 

invested in making improvements 

everywhere else across the ecosystems 

of equipment and processes underlying 

electronic trading, these companies are 

seeking providers whose networks have 

been optimized for the task. 

What’s more, electronic trading is 

likely to be the catalyst for bringing 

heightened latency sensitivity to more 

mainstream applications, such as Internet 

gaming, video, and business continuity. 

It’s important that service providers 

learn the low-latency market terrain 

today if they are to find themselves well- 

positioned for tomorrow’s additional opportunities.

Ad Index Calendar 

ADvertISer PAGe WeBSIte June 

3M 27, 105 www.3M 

Telecommunications.com 

Adtran 15, 28 www.adtran.com 

Advanced MediaTechnologies 28, 37 www.amt.com 

AFLTelecommunications 28, 101 www.afltele.com 

AT&T Connected Communities 29, C-4 www.att.com/communities 

ATX Networks 29 www.atxnetworks.com 

Broadband Properties 2-3, 38, 109 www.bbpmag.com 

BlonderTongue 30 www.blondertongue.com 

Calix 30 www.calix.com 

Channell Corp. 9, 30 www.channell.com 

Charles Industries 31, 130 www.charlesindustries.com 

Clearfield, Inc. 1, 31 www.clearfieldconnection.com 

Comcast 31, 91 www.comcast.com 

ConnexionTechnologies 24, 25, 31 www.cnxtech.com 

Corning Cable Systems 32, C-3 www.corning.com/cablesystems 

COS Systems 13, 32 www.cossystems.com 

Dish Network 32, 39 www.dishnetwork.com 

Display Systems, Int’l 33 www.displaysystemsintl.com 

G4STechnology (formerly Adesta) 5, 33 www.G4STechnology.com 

Great Lakes Data Systems 29 www.glds.com 

Human Productivity Lab 131 www.humanproductivitylab.com 

Information Data Products / Data Connect Ent. 43 www.idpc.com 

Mac Gray 33, 124 www.macgray.com 

Multicom, Inc. 34, 113 www.multicominc.com 

OFS 34, 121 www.ofsoptics.com 

Radiant Communications 11, 35 www.rccfiber.com 

RVA, LLC 125 www.RLALLC.com 

Spot On Networks 35 www.spotonnetworks.com 

Successful.com 117 www.successful.com 

Sumitomo Electric Lightwave 35 www.sumitomoelectric.com 

Suttle 36, 47 www.suttleonline.com 

Team Fenex 33 www.teamfenex.com 

Televes USA 36 www.televes.com 

TimeWarner Cable 7, 36 www.timewarnercable.com 

Verizon Enhanced Communities 37, C-2 www.verizon.com/communities 

ViewTEQ 37, 95 www.viewteq.com 

Walker & Associates 38, 87 www.walkerfirst.com 


1 – 3 

Intelligent Community Forum 

Building the Broadband Economy 

Polytechnic Institute of NewYork University 

NewYork, NY 

646-291-6166 

www.intelligentcommunity.org 

23 – 25 

NAA Education Conference & Expo 

Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino 

LasVegas, NV 

703-518-6141 

www.naahq.org 

SePteMBer 

18 – 22 

BICSI Fall Conference & Exhibition 

MGM Grand Hotel & Convention Center 

LasVegas, NV 

813-979-1991 

www.bicsi.org 

26 – 30 

FTTH Conference & Expo 

Walt DisneyWorld Swan & Dolphin Hotel 

Orlando, FL 

613-226-9988 

www.ftthconference.com 

nOveMBer 

7 – 9 

NMHC Apartment Operations & 

Technology Conference & Exposition 

Hilton Anatole 

Dallas,TX 

202-974-2300 

www.nmhc.org 

APrIl 2012 

24 – 26 

Broadband Properties Summit 

InterContinental Hotel – Dallas 

Addison,Texas 

877-588-1649 

www.bbpmag.com

As a leading supplier of optical components used in today’s telecommunications networks, 

Corning ensures your investment provides value today and into the future. Focus on the 

big picture and make the most of your Stimulus award. Learn more about our Stimulus 

Advantage Program by visiting us at the 2011 Broadband Properties Summit - Booth #515. 

Find out more and register to win a free gift at offers.corning.com/BBP2011

Open new 

doors for 

everyone. 

AT&T Connected Communities in a market full of walls and windows, you can 

offer more. A better lifestyle, made possible with superior options from AT&T. With 

customized packages including voice, advanced U-verse SM TV, internet connectivity 

at home and access to thousands of Wi-Fi locations on the go. All while you earn 

extra income. To get the details on our commissions, go to att.com/communities. 

©2011 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. AT&T and the 

AT&T logo are trademarks of AT&T Intellectual Property.

Fiber - Broadband Properties

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?