Paul Bunyan Communications has teamed up with Calix to offer its customers in northern Minnesota a Gigabit service.
Starting early next year, Paul Bunyan Communications will be offering its GigaZone Project service to its subscribers in northern Minnesota’s Beltrami, Hubbard, Itasca, Koochiching, and St. Louis Counties. The GigaZone project is slated for Paul Bunyan’s entire 5,000 square mile service area, but it will take several years to complete.
The GigaZone Project will leverage Calix’s recently introduced 844G GigaCenters gateways deployed in subscribers’ homes via direct fiber connections to offer Internet speeds of up to one gigabit per second (Gbps) as well as PBTV Fusion television and GigaZone voice services with unlimited long distance. Paul Bunyan will use the same premises service delivery platform to provide Wi-Fi coverage throughout the home.
GigaZone also includes tiers with download speeds of up to 250 Mbps and 500 Mps. Pricing on the 1-Gig service starts at $100, while the 250 and 500 tiers are $60 and $80, respectively. All three tiers offer symmetrical speeds on the downstream and upstream.
“For 63 years, Paul Bunyan Communications has always been focused on one mission — providing the latest technologies and service offerings to our cooperative members independent of location or size,” Gary Johnson, Paul Bunyan Communications’ CEO and general manager. “The GigaZone Project is the next big step in this pursuit, bringing to our members a powerful gigabit services experience what will make use of world-leading wireless and wireline technologies. The 844G GigaCenters from Calix will be key to this project’s success, allowing us establish a managed presence in the home from which to leverage advanced Wi-Fi capabilities to get our GigaZone services into the hands of our members faster, more conveniently, and less expensively.”
Calix’s GigaCenters currently deliver over GPON today with point-to-point Gigabit Ethernet (GE) slated for the future. It enables fast wireless speeds to all Wi-Fi enabled devices in the home via the latest 802.11ac “wave 2” Wi-Fi technology with 4×4 Multi-User Multiple Input Multiple Output (MU-MIMO) technologies.
The PBTV Fusion video services will be deployed wirelessly throughout each GigaZone home, eliminating the majority of in-home wiring to set-top boxes and providing subscribers the freedom to watch even high-definition video wirelessly virtually anywhere in the home.
“Since 2004, Paul Bunyan Communications and Calix have worked together to systematically lay the foundations for this world-class fiber network in northern Minnesota,” said John Colvin, senior vice president of North American sales at Calix. “As one of the early adopters of fiber technologies, it is fitting that Paul Bunyan Communications would once again be a leader in their community and in the industry by establishing the GigaZone, one of the largest gigabit networks in the United States.”
Grande Communications also partnered with Calix on its 1-Gig service in parts of Austin, Texas.
