Grand River chooses Zhone MXK for FTTx network

Zhone Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: ZHNE) says it is working with Grand River Mutual Telephone Corp., Missouri’s second largest independent operator, on a greenfield fiber-optic network that will provide gigabit-speed Internet access, VoIP, and high-definition video services to residential and business subscribers.

Grand River Mutual Telephone has selected Zhone’s MXK multi-service access platform to power and manage an FTTx network across its entire customer base. The MXK is a carrier-grade, IP-based platform that can support a mix of access technologies, including Active Ethernet, GPON, and VDSL2. The local operator also plans to install Zhone’s zNID optical network terminals at individual residential and business customer sites.

“With more than 15,000 access lines spanning Northern Missouri and Southern Iowa, we needed a fiber access vendor with superior scale and effective network management capabilities,” said Wendel Myers, general manager of Grand River Mutual Telephone. “The increased density, scale, and performance provided by the Zhone MXK and zNID ONTs address our network complexity and challenges. The benefit for service providers like us is that a full range of delivery mediums can be deployed side by side in the MXK which limits the cost of network upgrades and ongoing broadband deployments.”

For more information on FTTx/access systems and suppliers, visit the Lightwave Buyer’s Guide.