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Broadband Access
West Plains Telecommunications gives rural Texas a dose of fiber
FTTH becomes ILEC's foundation to compete with oncoming competition
by Sean Buckley
For most independent ILECs, a wholesale migration to Fiber-to-the-Home tends to be triggered by some competitive force — typically a cable operator that wants to come into the territory and offer voice — but in Muleshoe, Texas-based West Plains Telecommunications’ case the driver towards FTTH is to be prepared for eventual competition.
Formed as an operating subsidiary in 1995 when its parent Five Area Telephone Cooperative purchased five telephone exchanges from the former GTE, now Verizon, making major network upgrades is not uncommon for West Plains.
One of West Plains’ earliest and most daunting challenges was dealing with out of date CO equipment. When it was founded, the ILEC inherited step-by-step switching infrastructure that was more than 50 years old. After transferring its voice lines to digital switching, the company turned its attention to its copper network.
Already acting as a distributor for satellite company, West Plains’ main competition is a cable company in the region that offers traditional cable-based video and some wireless broadband services.
Currently delivering voice and high-speed data in the areas where it has built out its FTTH network leveraging ADC's fiber management systems and Alloptic GEPON gear, West Plains believes it has the right elements to compete.
“We’re looking ahead at possibly doing video at a time when we can make the business case to get into that market,” said Mark Washington, Plant Manager for West Plains Telecommunications. “As far as the fiber and the Alloptic and the ADC gear go we know that will position us to do a lot of high-speed broadband and of course video when that comes into play for us.”
Five-year fiber plan
As the saying goes, timing is everything. For West Plains, the time to deploy FTTH has come during as many of the largest incumbent carriers are aggressively upgrading their last mile networks to fiber.
And while the rural ILEC has little in common with large carriers such as Verizon Communications and its ongoing mammoth FiOS FTTH build out, these ongoing large-scale deployments are making FTTH more affordable for smaller operators like West Plains.
“When you see Verizon and other big players build FTTH networks, it definitely is going to drive the prices down for the independents and the coops,” Washington said.
With its copper network degraded and not usable for advanced services, West Plains knew the only migration was going to be with fiber.
Washington and his team determined that the construction costs of deploying fiber would be similar to going back and simply upgrading the copper plant with more copper.
“The plant was very old, and we did not feel that we could do any high-speed data or certainly video,” he said. “From a financial side that copper plant had become fully depreciated on our books. Looking into the future technologies that we want to provide to our customers, we decided that fiber was the way to go for us.”
Since launching its five year Fiber-to-the-Home strategy in 2005, West Plains began the process of cutting over customers in mid-2008.
Initially, the focus of their FTTH drive has been on the five telephone exchanges its parent purchased from the former GTE.
Beginning with its largest exchange in its Muleshoe headquarters, an exchange that has about 2,800 voice access lines, the operator has been taking a phased approach to upgrading its network with FTTH. In that process West Plains was able to extend the fiber network to businesses and local schools within the city limits.
“We’ve completed construction in two exchanges and are nearing completion in a third,” he said. “We’re in the process of doing the cutover in these exchanges right now.”
Since building out the fiber network throughout Muleshoe, West Plains has started upgrade its neighboring telephone exchange 14 miles away in Sudan, Texas. Because it did not have as many miles of rural area, West Plains did the entire exchange.
Finally, the next biggest exchange in West Plains’ service territories is Olton, Texas. Located 40 miles from its Muleshoe headquarters, it also hit the city limits serving businesses and schools.
Because the areas it serves are very rural, a big challenge is that they have to weigh the business case of deploying fiber-to-the-home.
“Density became an issue,” Washington said. “With many of our rural customers, we may have one customer per mile that we serve, so it becomes an economical issue as we look at how far we can push this out into these rural areas we serve.”
Ultimately, the ILEC’s plan will be to expand that FTTH drive to segments of its parent company Five Area Telephone Cooperative’s six telephone exchange territory.
Rounding up subscribers
So far, the FTTH drive has been proceeding on schedule. With 1,800 voice and data customers cut over from copper to its FTTH network in Muleshoe — a process it wants to finish during Q1 09 — for its residential, business and school customers.
But like other independent ILECs upgrading to fiber, limited staff resources are an issue.
If there’s one frustration Washington has about his company’s Fiber-to-the-Home drive, it would be the time it takes to conduct installations.
At issue is the existing in-home wiring. While the operator’s technicians have no problem bringing the fiber to the side of the home, connecting inside the home is a different story.
Since the existing wiring in the homes West Plains is typically lower-grade Cat 3 and below, the operator decided to pull Cat 5 wiring to each house it connects to its fiber network. By doing this it can ensure that customers — especially high-speed data subscribers — would be able to realize the benefits of the new network.
“That’s been kind of a challenge for us,” Washington said. “Early on it’s gone pretty well, but there are always issues we did not realize: finding customers at home to turn on their [data] service or dial tone on has been our biggest issue.”
Despite these issues, West Plains is continuing in its process of cutting over service in the second telephone exchange now.
Surviving the elements
Besides scheduling installations, the northwest Texas climate West Plains operates in is not the most forgiving.
In particular, the region is prone to dusty winds.
After looking at all of the options for fiber network management and distribution, West Plains settled on ADC.
“The way they seal up was a big concern because while the Northeast and Chicago gets the snow, we get the wind,” Washington said. “We get blowing windstorms so a speck of dirt could really cause you many headaches.”
To protect both its outside plant and CO fiber network infrastructure, West Plains has deployed ADC’s OmniReach Fiber Distribution Hubs 3000 Series and the Fiber Access Terminals.
What set ADC apart from the other fiber management products were the little things that make a technician’s life easier.
For instance, the ADC outside plant equipment has a location panel on the back of the cabinet so a technician does not have to open up a hand hole to locate the fiber.
“That’s one little option, but we locate that every day,” Washington said.
Given the required investment to deploy FTTH, anything that makes an operator’s installation time easier will enable them to maintain service uptime and gain a quicker ROI.
Washington added that the ease of installation also means less loss, an aspect that can have an effect on an operator’s ability to maintain new services.
“Anytime you have a splice or you have a connection, you’re going to incur some loss, so it’s critical you can keep it sealed and clean,” he said. “Anytime you’re working with a splitter cabinet in the field or a splitter in the CO, you’re going to have loss in the network and that becomes critical especially as you push out the bandwidth customers are going to ask for with broadband and video.”
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