Building Broadband Infrastructure in Rural America
The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) calls for more than $7 billion in expenditures on rural broadband infrastructure. This is a huge opportunity for carriers to extend broadband services to customers in rural areas. To make the most of this opportunity, carriers will need a broad range of network solutions that optimize broadband service delivery while minimizing costs.
The specific infrastructure solutions chosen will vary based on factors such as the service provider type, available resources, presence of existing infrastructure (brownfield/greenfield), geography/topography, and building/population density. The good news is that carriers and other service providers have many available options in deploying rural broadband networks, including fiber-based, high-speed wireless and DSL solutions.
Fiber to the premises (FTTP) is the ultimate choice for supporting the bandwidth required for advanced services because it offers the greatest scalability. Using today’s passive optical networking (PON) technologies, carriers can cost-effectively deliver 100 megabits per second and more to each business and residential customer. Carriers continue to recognize that without the high capacity that fiber can deliver, the volumes of broadband that are necessary to offer essential services can’t make their way into customers’ enterprises and living rooms, much less onto mobile devices.
When building next-generation fiber networks, carriers must balance construction-cost considerations with the need to install flexible networks. For more than 20 years, they have benefited from the advantages provided by pre-connectorized interface points inside the central office (CO), such as easy testing and re-configuring of the network and simplified service turn-up. In addition, there is a greatly reduced need for highly-skilled technicians to perform those tasks. Now, more service providers are achieving the same advantages throughout the network as they use connectors not only in the CO but also in the outside plant (OSP) and customer premises.
Leveraging Stimulus Programs
To ensure rapid, trouble-free, and cost-effective deployment of broadband services in rural areas, carriers will want to partner with vendors who support the requirements for broadband services funding under the ARRA. Infrastructure partners should have a broad portfolio of RUS-listed fiber, DSL, and digital wireless solutions which can be rapidly and cost-effectively deployed, and which support an easy migration to next-generation networks.
During OSP Expo, ADC featured a number of products from its extensive RUS-listed portfolio. These included the OmniReach® 3000 Fiber Distribution Hub (FDH) cabinet and OmniReach Multiport Service Terminals (MSTs) and fiber-hardened drop cables, the FiberGuide® Optical Raceway system and the OMX600® Optical Distribution Frame (ODF) as well as ADC’s Next Generation Frame (NGF) and LSX 288 fiber panel.
ADC’s end-to-end FTTX solutions serve more than 350 U.S. customers, including RBOCs, municipalities, CLECs, utilities, IOCs, MSOs and developers, by supporting their unique requirements and providing applications for all types of end users.
For more information on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, as well as a complete listing of ADC’s USDA Rural Development-accepted products, visit ADC’s Broadband Stimulus Resource Center at http://www.adc.com/productsandservices/rus/.
Share This
Printer-friendly version
