Tag: Iowa

Calix announces five municipal broadband fiber-optic network deployments

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Rangely Museum

Rangely Museum (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Lightwave Staff

Calix Inc. will provide its fiber to the premises (FTTP) network gear to five municipal markets.

Independence Light and Power, Telecommunications (ILP, T) in Independence, IA, plans to upgrade its hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) plant to an all-fiber network to deliver managed WiFi services to subscribers and expand the company’s reach outside of the city limits. The service provider will deploy Calix 725GE optical network terminals (ONTs) and E7-2 modular access systems.

“Every week, we are adding more and more broadband subscribers who are looking for a robust and reliable broadband service,” says Josh Vandenburg, network engineer at ILP, T. “By moving to the Calix solutions, we are now able to seamlessly transition to fiber, which allows us to roll out new services and fully utilize the 10 Gbits/sec ring that runs through Independence.” Continue reading

Progress Edition: Laying the groundwork: MPW installs fiber for faster Internet

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Melissa Caliger

MUSCATINE, Iowa — Imagine Internet speeds capable of downloading 12 TV shows, 900 songs and one High Definition movie in 36 seconds.

Muscatine Power and Water officials say it is possible and they have a plan to make surfing the web a better experience by increasing Internet speeds and a switch from coaxial cable wiring to lightning-fast fiber-optic cable by the end of 2017.

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Tom Wheeler’s Other Web Takeover

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Optic fiber

Optic fiber (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This week Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler plans to seize regulatory control over the Internet by declaring private broadband carriers to be public utilities. Less well known is that he also wants to usurp state authority to regulate municipal broadband networks.

Local governments are forever seeking opportunities to diversify their, er, investments in sports stadiums, convention centers and such. Many lately have been getting into broadband. Municipalities have built some 180 fiber-optic networks in addition to about 75 cable services. Most operate as de facto public utilities with an implicit, if not explicit, taxpayer backstop. Continue reading

Broadband access gap in Iowa shrinking: Connect Iowa

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Internet Access Here Sign

Internet Access Here Sign (Photo credit: Steve Rhode)

I am personally delighted to see my home state of Iowa increasing broadband penetration.  Like any big data gathering project, the results are only as good as the data put into the database.  I believe that some providers are a little over optimistic on their service availability especially just outside of metropolitan areas.  I honestly think that there are more than 2.3% of the households that are not served by wired Internet.  Just look at the number of households in Warren county outside of Des Moines with no service.  The next step should be to improve the quality of data.  In any case the numbers are very high which for a state that has very long loop lengths area-wise.

New research unveiled today by Connect Iowa shows that the broadband availability gap in the state is shrinking, with 93.5% of Iowa residents now having access to fixed broadband of 3 Mbps download or higher, compared to 92.5% last year.

Nonprofit Connect Iowa has been working since 2009 to ensure that Iowans have access to the economic, educational, and quality of life benefits derived from increased broadband access, adoption, and use.

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Iowa: Study: A third of households lack broadband

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For some reason I seem to know many people in Iowa that are the 5% that do not have access to broadband.  I assume that satellite access was included in this study.  Penetration would be much less if satellite was not included.

95% have access to some form of high-speed Internet, but some don’t want it, say it’s too expensive or don’t have a computer.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CEDAR RAPIDS — A new study prepared in cooperation with the Iowa Utilities Board found that one-third of Iowa households don’t have broadband service, but not entirely because of a lack of access.

The study, released Wednesday, found that 95 percent of households do have access to some form of high-speed Internet, The Gazette of Cedar Rapids reported.

Among households that don’t subscribe to broadband service, 45 percent didn’t want it, 31 percent didn’t own a computer and 21 percent said it was too expensive.

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CFU adds fiber optic links to all customers

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Another community is taking their destiny into their own hands by building their own minicipal broadband network.  Note that they will be building the network out to anchor tenants, like businesses, first followed by homes.  CFU plans on using a PON system to start, but it looks like they are burying enough fiber to switch to active Ethernet down the road.

CEDAR FALLS — Cedar Falls is getting an express lane to the information super highway.

Cedar Falls Utilities is installing to-the-premises fiber optic cable throughout the community. Construction on the three-year, $17 million project which also includes a contract to Salesforce integration service is set to begin this fall.

The fiber optic cable will replace the existing coaxial cable that carries Internet and cable television service. The upgrade will offer maximum Internet speeds hundreds of times faster and give CFU bandwidth for up to 100 more HD television channels on its cable system. On Thursday, the CFU board approved the contracts for the project.

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