APRIL 24, 2009 -- Siren Telephone Company (STC) announced that it is deploying an FTTH initiative in Siren, WI, with the help of Clearfield Inc. (search Lightwave for Clearfield).
As part of the citywide, 3,000-access line deployment, STC has selected Clearfield's FieldSmart fiber management platform featuring the FieldSmart Fiber Distribution System (FDS) in its central office. Clearfield FDS products include patch panels, inter-bay management panels, and cable management troughs. Additionally, STC is using the Clearfield Fiber Scalability Center (FSC) in its outside plant (OSP) network. FSC products include OSP crossconnect cabinets, Clearview patch and splice cassettes, and OSP fiber pigtails.
"We like to use American-made products -- particularly Midwestern-made," explains general manager Sid Sherstad. "This product is going to be very popular. I believe that every telecommunications company in the country is going to need to do what we did -- that is direct fiber to the home."
He says that the fiber conversion is in response to STC's business and residential customers' need for significantly more bandwidth to handle the demands of high-definition television and high-speed Internet. "We can now bring them better service than they could ever get through satellite, wireless, copper wireline, or coaxial. With this new bandwidth capacity, we can address future high definition needs that aren't even available yet," he says.
The new FTTH capability will provide STC with a competitive and sustainable edge. "Independent telephone companies can continue to use copper, which was designed for a narrowband voice network, and try to trick it to carry broadband for short distances," he notes. "But demand for broadband is going to go up and up. And there are limits to what we can put over the copper network. In today's digital world, you need to grow with the technology, and that's fiber."
Sherstad says the Clearfield platform will allow the company to hook up customers once and then perform all service changes via software management without returning to the site for service calls. "If they want to increase from 10 Mbytes to 20, for example, we can just open up the throttle a little bit by hitting a couple keys."
Visit Clearfield