While Google is still doing groundwork in Kansas City, working gigabit networks are beginning to pop up here and there.
Bristol Tennessee Essential Services (BTES) has 1 Gigabit broadband service now available to all of its 33,000 residential and business electric customers, while RST Global Communications in North Carolina has completed the first phase of its fiber network that will eventually go up to 10 Gbps.
BTES’s networks is built on Alcatel-Lucent’s Gigabit passive optical network (GPON)
Technology, including the vendor’s GPON-enabled 7342 ISAM FTTU optical line terminals (OLTs) and optical network terminals (ONTs). The network is able to provide voice, video and data services at rates up to 1 Gbps.
BTES’s OLTs connect to a 10 Gigabit backbone via Alcatel-Lucent’s 7450 ESS switches and are aggregated through a pair of 7750 BSR routers to 10 Gigabits of Internet capacity, the company said.
“You can download about two hours of video or upwards of 200 songs in just six seconds,” said Michael Browder, CEO of BTES. “For our residential customers, that means one person in the household can download a movie, while another is playing an online game, while another is watching an HDTV program – all without slowing down any of the activities. For our business customers, it opens the way for transporting and accessing ‘big data’, which is critical for economic development of the area.”
Separately, RST Global Communications, based in Shelby, N.C., has completed the first phase of its Real Fiber Network, an underground, 10 Gbps fiber optic network that includes backbone, middle and last mile installation.
The network currently serves North Carolina’s Piedmont region, including Charlotte, west Mecklenburg, Gaston, Cleveland, and Rutherford counties. Customers and potential customers in the area include AT&T, Wipro, Google, Apple, Facebook, The Walt Disney Company and others.
RST said its next phase to expand its footprint has begun and will offer FTTP services to thousands of homes and businesses served by RST’s existing routes. Future expansion includes all-fiber installations throughout the I-85 corridor of N.C. and S.C., which encompasses more than three million potential customers. The company is also exploring partnering to launch an LTE wireless service during 2013.
