Midcontinent Communications, in response to a bandwidth surge in the Upper Midwest, is ramping up its fiber to the premises (FTTp) offerings with Clearfield Inc.’s scalable fiber systems, which will service 250,000 customers in North and South Dakota and parts of Minnesota.
Midcontinent Communications is a provider of cable television, local and long distance telephone service, broadband Internet access, and cable advertising services. Its service area covers more than 240 communities--most of which have burgeoning bandwidth needs.
Clearfield, which designs and manufactures fiber distribution and management products, is located in Plymouth, Minnesota. Midcontinent was an early adopter of Clearfield's Clearview xPAK Cassette fiber management product.
The xPAK, which is engineered to land small port count fiber terminations and optical components as conveniently and inexpensively as possible, was tailor-made for Midcontinent's needs.
"We had looked for a long time to find a cost-effective product where we could terminate only 2 ports--versus 12 or 24. Clearfield came up with the solution. xPAK is the perfect solution for multiple Fiber-to-the-Business applications. We're using it in business parks, for business customers where we need to use small count fibers. We're using it as a building entrance terminal in a wall mount patch panel. It's also worked for us in a couple of locations as a transition box, where we provided services to wireless companies,” says a Brian Hanson, commercial construction manager for Midcontinent Communications.
Clearfield's FieldSmart Fiber Delivery Point (FDP) PON-in-a-PED is another scalable system embraced by Midcontinent. Designed to allow for FTTp rollouts without a large initial capital expense, it is a cost-effective and flexible option for fiber deployment.
The company also has adopted Clearfield's rack-mounted patch panels. "From our perspective, they're small and take up less space. They're easier to use. The guys in the field like them a lot, so they request them more. Like the xPAK, they're user-friendly and easy to put together," says Hanson.