16 September 2003 Minneapolis, MN Lightwave--Passive optical networking (PON) equipment provider Optical Solutions announced that the City of Windom will roll out the FiberPath 500 Fiber-to-the-Premises (FTTP) system to community residents and businesses.
The City of Windom is a growing city of 4,500 in southwest Minnesota that serves as a thriving transportation hub for the region. It boasts a diverse economy that includes manufacturing, agriculture, and medical businesses. Windom decided to enter the telecommunications market and create a municipal phone company to serve its citizens with powerful broadband services that were previously not available in the area.
"Not only was our dial up Internet service painfully slow - it was clearly hurting our city's economic development and growth," said Windom's City Administrator Dennis Nelson. "The FiberPath 500 delivers clear technical and operational advantages over Windom's existing coax infrastructure with its gigabit bandwidth. We can deploy in confidence with this ITU-compliant FTTP system."
Windom's City Council initially appointed a Telecommunications Committee back in 2001, which conducted market research to investigate the benefits and costs associated with a municipally owned telecommunications system. Windom then rolled out a telecommunications feasibility survey to residents, which included telephone surveys, community focus groups, and in-person interviews. Finally the City completed a comprehensive business plan that carefully considered all the access alternatives and defined the end result Windom required: a FTTP network to deliver triple play services to businesses and residents.
Optical Solutions recently announced its new ITU (International Telecommunication Union) standards-compliant FiberPath 500 FTTP system. The system enables service providers to deploy networks using either broadband PON (ITU G.983, 622-Mbit/sec downstream/155-Mbit/sec upstream) or Gigabit PON (ITU G.984, 1.2-Gbit/sec downstream/622-Mbit/sec upstream) network protocols. The FiberPath 500 system allows municipalities like Windom to deliver unprecedented data speeds, IP streaming media, hundreds of channels of digital and analog television, and multiple telephone lines. FiberPath 500 transmits these services via a Gigabit PON (GPON), which allows the service provider maximum flexibility and cost savings for construction and maintenance.
"GPON is the most advanced PON protocol. It incorporates the benefits of competing network standards and allows cost-effective implementation of 1.2 Gbits/sec at a reach of 20 km/12 miles," said Michael Howard, principal analyst at Infonetics Research. "GPON carries both native ATM and Ethernet and consequently supports both legacy TDM as well as advanced data services."
The FiberPath 500 FTTP system incorporates a GPON for broadband delivery of voice, video, and high-speed data directly to the home and broader community. Optical Solutions has over 60% of the installed base of PON systems, which are operational and generating revenue in communities throughout North America, according to the company. Customers are facilities-based service providers including independent telephone companies, competitive and incumbent local-exchange carriers, utilities, municipalities, and housing developers.