PETALUMA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Calix, Inc (NYSE:CALX) today announced that Broadband Stimulus award winners South Central Telephone Association (SC Telcom) and Madison Telephone, LLC (Madison Telephone) have selected the Calix Unified Access portfolio to address their respective “Fiber Forward” initiatives. Each initiative will leverage advanced Calix fiber access technologies to deliver a superior broadband services experience to underdeveloped parts of their respective access networks. The three separate initiatives awarded to the two companies will together result in over $13.9 million invested in implementing advanced broadband services in southern Kansas.
“Access to broadband services is essential to the sustainability of communities across Kansas and furthering their economic development,” said Steve Davis, general manager of SC Telcom and a member of the Kansas Broadband Advisory Task Force. “We felt that in the communities that we serve, it is imperative that the infrastructure that we choose to deploy be as ‘future-proof’ as possible. Our subscribers can range from the typical American small town family to the rancher running live auctions over the Internet, and with Calix fiber access solutions we know that we can deliver the broadband experience and competitive edge that our subscribers deserve. We expect these initiatives to be powerfully transformative to the communities that we are targeting, and believe Calix has the right portfolio of solutions to assure the broadband sustainability of these communities for the next decade.”
“Even in rural Kansas, it was easy to see that it’s becoming an ‘all-video world,’ and even easier to realize that Madison Telephone’s aging copper infrastructure wasn’t going to allow our subscribers to change with it,” said Mary Meyer, chief executive officer of Madison Telephone. “Moving ‘Fiber Forward’ was clearly the right direction to meet the needs of our community, but we faced the challenge of addressing a service area with a varied topology, an uneven dispersion of subscribers, and an overall population density across the service area of less than three subscribers per square mile. The task was daunting, but Calix provided us with a fiber solutions portfolio that enabled us to leverage a variety of fiber technologies – matching the right technology to each deployment scenario – yet manage it as one network. It’s the right network for us, and the right network for our community.”
The rural subscribers included in these three initiatives across southern Kansas will be served via a combination of fiber access technologies, including gigabit passive optical network (GPON), Active Ethernet (AE), and ten gigabit Ethernet (10GE) transport technologies, capable of delivering broadband speeds to the residence or business of up to one gigabit per second (Gbps).
- South Central will be using its Round 1 Stimulus funds, which consist of an $871 thousand grant and $3.5 million in private funds, to build an advanced GPON network to rural customers in the Lake City and Sun City, Kansas exchanges. The network, which will pass predominantly “unserved” residences and business in the area, will be engineered to enable data rates of over 100 megabits per second (Mbps) as well as reliable voice and business services to all premises passed. South Central will leverage the Calix C7 Multiservice Access Platform (MSAP) and a variety of 700GX/GE optical network terminals (ONTs) to deliver these services.
- South Central will be using its Round 2 Stimulus funds, which consist of a $558 thousand grant, a $560 thousand loan, and $575 thousand in private funds, to build an advanced AE network in the “underserved” community of Attica, Kansas. This network too will be engineered to be capable of delivering over 100 Mbps to every home and business in the community. The Calix E7 Ethernet Service Access Platform (ESAP) will be leveraged along with a variety of 700GX/GE ONTs.
- Madison Telephone, a small family-owned incumbent local exchange carrier located in southeastern Kansas, will be using its Round 1 Stimulus funds, which consist of a $3.5 million grant, a $3.5 million loan, and $763 thousand in private investment for its broadband infrastructure buildout in the Madison and Lamont, Kansas areas. Balancing the growing bandwidth needs of their community with the deployment realities of building a network to meet these emerging requirements, Madison is leveraging two different technologies – Active Ethernet in their served urban areas and GPON and Extended Reach GPON for rural subscribers. Each of these technologies is being deployed via the Calix E7 ESAP, which is also tying together their exchanges via 10GE redundant transport. At each subscriber premises, a Calix 700GX/GE ONT is being deployed that auto-detects the technology feeding it and provides support for H.248 voice over IP.
With today’s announcement, aggregate Calix vendor selections by Broadband Stimulus award winners for “last mile” Broadband Initiative Program award has now reached twelve different projects representing $114 million in Stimulus-related grants, loans, and private investment for plant engineering, materials, labor, and other costs, including access equipment.
