Bluepeak has received franchise approval from Harrah, OK, to build a high-speed fiber network for the community. The company will offer service at symmetrical speeds up to 5 Gbps for residential customers and up to 10 Gbps symmetrical for business customers.
The expansion effort, valued at about $5 million will make service available to more than 5,000 residences and businesses in the city. Bluepeak has deployed speeds up to 5 Gbps to serve residential customers in some other markets as well.
“We’re thrilled to be partnering with the City of Harrah to build a next-generation, fiber-to-the-home network,” said Rich Fish, CEO of Bluepeak, in a prepared statement about Bluepeak 5 Gbps service. “Bluepeak is a different kind of provider with faster, more reliable speeds that will better connect homes, businesses and organizations across Harrah.”
Bluepeak operates as Vast Broadband in parts of Minnesota and South Dakota but plans to begin using the Bluepeak name in those states as well sometime this year.
Providers have several choices for providing 5 Gbps symmetrical service, including using fiber-to-the-premises XGS-PON or NG-PON2 technology.
While NG-PON2 has a symmetrical capacity of 40 Gbps per neighborhood, more providers have been choosing XGS-PON, which has 10 Gbps symmetrical total capacity, because it is less costly. Among the major providers, AT&T and Frontier have been investing in XGS-PON for their multigigabit deployments, while Verizon has settled on using NG-PON2.
A Bluepeak spokesperson did not immediately reply to an inquiry from Telecompetitor asking which technology the company was using for its multigigabit deployments.
The Harrah announcement comes only a day after Bluepeak announced expansion into Shawnee, OK. The company expects to break ground this spring on a high-speed fiber network there that also will support speeds up to 5 Gbps symmetrical for residential customers and up to 10 Gbps symmetrical for business customers.
The $12 million projects will make Bluepeak service available to more than 12,000 residences and businesses in the community.
