Municipally owned service provider Fibrant is slated to announce today at 2:00 PM EDT that it will offer 10-Gbps broadband services via a fiber to the premises (FTTP) architecture in its home city of Salisbury, NC. Salisbury's Catawba College will be the initial customer for the fiber-optic broadband service, the first of its kind in the U.S. according to the service provider and its FTTP equipment supplier, Calix, Inc. (NYSE: CALX).
The 10-Gbps offering is the culmination of a five-year FTTP deployment effort. Fibrant began offering 1-Gbps last year using Calix's E7-2 Ethernet Services Access Platform (ESAP). The new 10-Gbps services will leverage the company's E5-520 Ethernet Service Access Node (ESAN) to deliver the services via point-to-point fiber links. Calix says Fibrant will transition to next-gen PON -- XGS-PON, NG-PON2, or both -- beginning next year (see "Calix offers NG-PON2 TWDM PON support").
Catawba College's Hoke Hall will be the first building connected to the 10-Gbps fiber-optic network. The college foresees FTTP-related infrastructure improvements in other campus buildings, and hopes to turn computer labs into "Digital Media Creation and Collaboration" labs. High-speed video conferencing also will be added to some facilities throughout the campus.
"The future is all about rich immersive digital media and being able to communicate and collaborate with others in real-time regardless of where people are in time and space. It is exciting that a small college like Catawba can now experiment with high-speed technology we believed to be years away. To put the speed change in perspective, having 10 Gbps gives us the potential to be 10 times faster on campus," said Joanna L. Jasper, chief information officer at Catawba College.
Fibrant expects to offer the 10-Gbps services to data centers, medical, and educational institutions, then to small to medium businesses and residences.
For more information on FTTx equipment and suppliers, visit the Lightwave Buyer's Guide.