Tag: National Broadband Network

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

Despite Gigabit Hype, U.S. Broadband’s Actually Getting Less Competitive Than Ever

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by Karl Bode

Despite government programs, national broadband plans, billions in subsidies and a lot of recent hype paid to gigabit services like Google Fiber, U.S. broadband is actually getting less competitive than ever before across a huge swath of the country. Companies like AT&T and Verizon have beenbacking away from unwanted DSL networks they simply don’t want to upgrade. In some cases this involves selling these assets to smaller telcos (who take on so much debt they can’t upgrade them either), but in many markets this involves actively trying to drive customers away via either rate hikes or outright neglect.

As an end result, the nation’s biggest cable companies are enjoying a larger monopoly in many markets than ever before as they hoover up those fleeing customers. According to the latest postmortem of 2015 subscriber totals, the seventeen largest broadband providers acquired 3.1 million broadband subscribers last year. But if you look at the numbers more closely, you’ll notice that nearly all of them were acquired by the cable industry: Continue reading

Australia Expands Fiber Internet Network Footprint

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By RACHEL PANNETT

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Read more about key players in Australia's upcoming elections.

CANBERRA—Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Friday unveiled an expanded footprint for a planned national high-speed fiber Internet network that will now reach 93% of homes and businesses, up from 90% previously.

The network is a defining policy for Gillard’s ruling center-left Labor government ahead of an Aug. 21 general election.

But the program isn’t universally loved, even though it is popular with many voters. Australia’s main conservative Liberal-National opposition coalition has questioned the need for such an expensive service and has threatened to scrap the plan if it returns to power.

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