Apr 28 2008
Calix today announced that its fiber to the premises (FTTP) solutions, including the Calix 700 family of GPON Optical Network Terminals (ONTs), are deployed across the state of Texas allowing service providers to deliver advanced information, communication, and entertainment services to residential and business customers alike. From the suburban landscape outside of San Antonio, to the rural prairies of the Texas Panhandle, Texas service providers are finding success with innovative Calix FTTP solutions. Both GVTC Communications, based in the San Antonio metropolitan area, and XIT Rural Telephone Cooperative Inc., in the Northwest Texas Panhandle, have deployed the Calix gigabit passive optical network (GPON) solutions in their service areas.
According to industry research firm Dell’Oro Group, Calix optical line terminals (OLTs) and ONTs are the world’s most widely deployed GPON solutions. The company has commercially deployed hundreds of thousands of OLT subscriber terminations and ONTs. Calix FTTP solutions combine field-proven reliability with unrivalled flexibility for service providers making the investment in FTTP networks. According to the March issue of Broadband Properties Magazine, Calix ONTs are deployed in 15 of the 22 FTTP deployments in Texas. These deployments are in both rural to suburban settings and deliver a variety of services such as IPTV, RF video, gigabit Ethernet data, and business services.
“As our customer base continues to grow and service-provider FTTP rollouts expand, we are seeing customers push the envelope in deploying GPON in a variety of unique applications and settings,” said Dave Russell, solutions marketing director at Calix. “Both GVTC and XIT are prime examples of how easily the Calix fiber solutions can adapt to drastically different service provider needs across Texas.”
GVTC, which serves an area of 2,000 square miles over 11 counties with approximately 42,000 access lines and 22,000 broadband customers, has widely deployed the Calix 700 family of ONTs in a variety of scenarios. One of the company’s most successful fiber projects is a Fiber to the Business (FTTB) overbuild in the community of Boerne, a rapidly growing suburb of San Antonio. Between August 2006 and August 2007, GVTC brought fiber to 95 percent of businesses in Boerne. In a competitive market with both an incumbent RBOC and a cable provider, GVTC uses Calix technology to service more than 200 businesses with a variety of commercial services from DS-1 to RF video.
“The Fiber to the Business project is a very important component of our strategic plans at GVTC,” said George O’Neal, vice president, network services, for GVTC. “We highly value our business customers because they tend to be stable and in constant need of additional products. The Calix 700 ONTs provide GVTC unparalleled flexibility to deliver advanced broadband, as well as traditional business services, to a wide variety of businesses and deployment environments.”
Like many providers in the U.S., XIT Rural Telephone Cooperative Inc. was recently faced with the decision to either invest in rehabilitating its existing copper infrastructure or in overbuilding its footprint with fiber. With the Calix C7 multiservice access platform (MSAP) already anchoring its copper-based network, XIT decided the timing was right to move to an FTTP network. XIT is now deploying Calix 700 ONTs to offer a triple pay of voice, data, and advanced IPTV services to residences and businesses throughout the city of Texline.
“By deploying the Calix C7 and the 700 family of GPON ONTs, we’ve been able to future proof our network for many years to come,” said Darrell Denis, general manager of XIT. “Even here in rural America, XIT has found FTTP to be the best bet, as it provides our subscribers with the most advanced broadband-intensive applications such as IPTV. With FTTP, we’re also putting in place an infrastructure to support whatever services or bandwidth requirements come down the line.”
Today at the Broadband Properties Summit in Dallas, Texas, a variety of Calix customers, including GVTC, will be sharing their perspectives and experiences in delivering FTTP. The panel discussion, entitled “Leading-Edge FTTP Deployment in Texas: Four Providers, Four Perspectives,” is scheduled at 1 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency DFW.