Elberton, Ga., embarks on coax-to-fiber transformation to stave off encroaching broadband competitors
As the largest city in Elbert County, Georgia, Elberton’s claim to fame is being the "granite capital of the world.”
But the city, which is about 100 miles East of Atlanta, is also known for its independent and self-sufficient nature. Elberton's economic drivers also include agriculture and small businesses, and it provides a slower-paced, more rural way of life compared to larger metropolitan areas.
The city’s service roots run deep. In 1895, the city built its hydroelectric dam and has been building off that ever since.
Elberton is a full-service provider. Besides providing essential community services such as electricity, natural gas, water, wastewater, and solid waste/recycling, provided by Elberton Utilities, Elberton is also a cable operator that provides high-speed internet, cable TV, and other broadband services through its department, ElbertonNET. These services are available to both city and county residents and are managed by the City of Elberton.
In the early 2000s, the city decided to put cable and internet in the city limits, and it started providing internet services.
Kevin Eavenson, Interim City Manager at City of Elberton, said the city has continued to extend to other neighboring cities in Elberton County. Elberton, which is the seat of Elberton County, has about 4,500 residents, while Elberton County in total has 19,000 residents.
“We have upgraded our technology over time,” he said. “Through several expansions, we expanded our service from the city limits of Elberton throughout about 90-95 percent of Elbert County.”
A technology crossroads
With all these expansions, Elberton is now facing a new challenge of how to accommodate new growth across its system.
The service provider’s existing coax and DOCSIS network won’t be able to get them there. While it could go to the next iteration of DOCSIS, Elberton decided an all-fiber route was more viable.
Another key motivation was that it would not be the only broadband player in town, as other providers have started to penetrate Elberton and the county. AT&T and Comcast, in particular, have been enhancing their network builds in the area.
“We’re at a crossroads where we’re maxed out with older technology on a legacy system,” Eavenson said. “We had a decision to make: stay on the platform we have and max it out while our competitors are getting ahead of us, but with the help of our broadband division and ZCorum, we’re committed to providing this service.”
Working with ZCorum, a provider of managed services and diagnostics for broadband providers, the city will deploy Nokia’s next-generation fiber solutions and core IP routing technology as part of a broader modernization initiative that will replace its aging hybrid fiber-coaxial network.
Designed to support a full range of PON technologies from XGS and 25G to 50G PON and beyond, Nokia’s solution gives Elberton the choice and flexibility to optimize its network to its specific business case and needs. Nokia’s MoCA Access solution will also be used to help ensure high-speed access is available in buildings that can’t be fiberized, while its IP/MPLS routing solution establishes a backbone infrastructure that’s capable of supporting the city’s growing broadband demands.
Elberton, located in Northeastern Georgia, selected its fiber and IP solutions to power its advanced broadband network serving more than 10,000 households.
Unlike other community broadband efforts that had struggled, ElbertonNET has proven to be profitable. This, combined with the presence of competition, drove the city to reinvest in upgrading its system.
“Elberton got in touch with Nokia and developed a relationship,” Eavenson said. “We chose Nokia because they provided what we needed, and we’re ready to upgrade our system to provide 25 Gbps, something that no one else will be able to provide in this community.”
All-fiber transition
ElbertonNET’s current network consisted of a mixture of hybrid fiber coax (HFC) and Radio Frequency over Glass (RFoG). Part of the county is also on HFC facilities.
Today, about half of the city and the county’s facilities consist of HFC and RFoG.
As the first step in transitioning to an all-fiber-based network, it will work with ZCorum to build out the headend and prepare it to support the Nokia PON platform. From there, it would start overbuilding the existing HFC facilities with fiber optic cables.
During the transition, ElbertonNET will operate an XGS-PON network alongside the existing HFC and RFoG networks.
“We’ll take care of the old infrastructure first and put it online,” said David Dotson, Broadband Operations Manager at City of Elberton. “From there, we’ll be picking areas and focusing on transitioning customers from the HFC platform to the new 25G XGS platform.”
Ensuring a smooth rollout
Working alongside Nokia in this transition will be ZCorum, which will install and configure the technology on-site. ZCorum will also provide ongoing technical and operational support.
Having worked with ElbertonNET since it started as a dial-up provider in the late 1990s, ZCorum has been providing managed broadband services since the city launched its cable broadband service in 2001, and was instrumental in the city's decision to upgrade to fiber.
ZCorum has three key products for fiber providers that offer diagnostics and support capabilities: TruVizion, FiberVU, and Hosted Fiber Activation.
From a diagnostics perspective, TruVizion provides a real-time and historical view into comprehensive data collected from OLTs, along with performance metrics provided by individual ONTs in the home, while FiberVU is a full-featured GPON ONT activation and diagnostics application that is compatible with multiple fiber vendors.
For small to mid-sized operators like ElbertonNET, where managing broadband vendors’ proprietary software for fiber devices can be a challenge, ZCorum’s Hosted Fiber Activation hosts a provider’s activation software in its data center and manages the servers and maintenance of the software.
Arthur Skinner, VP of Worldwide Sales at ZCorum, said its relationship made it a logical choice for the city’s planned fiber transition.
“We have had a long-standing relationship with Elberton, and we became aware that the city was looking at a future-proof opportunity with fiber,” he said. “We created a relationship with Nokia, going on almost four years, which is very open and amenable to working with us and with the customers that have a lot of nuances.”
Given the diversity of the facilities that ElbertonNET has, it will be a two-year process of transitioning the network to an all-fiber-based XGS-PON network.
“This process will be done in various phases,” Skinner said. “We work with their engineering company to design the right architecture and equipment needed to convert RFoG to a fiber-based network and give you that 25G delivery of service for the future.”
However, Skinner emphasized that the process “took several months to get to that point.”
Navigating funding options
Besides the technical capabilities, ZCorum also assisted Elberton with pursuing funding opportunities, including the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program (BEAD) for the network plan.
Given the challenge and uncertainty surrounding the BEAD program since the Trump administration took office in January, ElbertonNET pushed forward with its plans.
“Elberton was looking at leveraging funding and maybe even BEAD,” Skinner said. “This was not a hold up. If BEAD were there, that would have been a tool in the toolbox; it would not hold things back.”
Setting future growth
Creating a path to 25 Gbps has implications not only for residential users but also for businesses in the Elberton community.
The city continues to live up to its granite supplier status. Today, Elberton produces more granite monuments than any other city around the globe.
Also, Elberton is known for its unified rail, public airport, historic downtown, and Antebellum homes. As the county seat, Elberton is home to county government offices and other critical services.
“Elberton is still called the granite capital of the world, so they do a lot of industrial and commercial business in the community,” Skinner said. “The city has a great constituency base, and it’s a bedroom community for Athens and North Georgia. You can also get to Atlanta in two hours.”
He added that since the city is positioned well and growing, higher-speed broadband will likely resonate with the community as a key destination.
“The need for future high-speed bandwidth of 25 Gbps is going to be there,” Skinner said. “This allows them to grow into that network over the next 10 years.”
What is MoCA?
Multimedia over Coax (MoCA) is a technology that uses a home's existing coaxial cable wiring to create a high-speed wired network. By leveraging the coaxial network already in place for cable TV, MoCA adapters convert the coaxial cable into network wiring, providing consistent, high-speed internet access without the need to run new Ethernet cables or deal with spotty Wi-Fi. The most recently released version of the standard, MoCA 3.0, supports speeds of up to 10 Gbps. However, MoCA 3.0 technology is not yet available in customer premises equipment.
Enhancing MDU broadband
Being a growing city that includes a mix of new and existing multi-dwelling units (MDUs), ElbertonNET is keen on being able to penetrate MDUs regardless of whether they are feasible for fiber or not.
Nokia’s MoCA Access solution will also be used to help ensure high-speed access is available in buildings that can’t be fiberized, while its IP/MPLS routing solution establishes a backbone infrastructure that’s capable of supporting the city’s growing broadband demands.
The MoCA Access solution, which leverages InCoax’s technology, connects to a provider's existing FTTH network. Instead of running new fiber, it uses the coaxial cables already present in the building.
InCoax’s technology has been integrated into the Nokia Gigabit solution to deliver broadband over existing in-building coaxial networks using MoCA Access 2.5.
“We will use Nokia’s MoCA solution in MDUs where it would be difficult to get fiber into each location,” Dotson said. “This would be apartment complexes in the city, including a large retirement home.”
Jeff Heynen, VP at Dell’Oro Group, said MoCA can be an effective platform as cable operators expand their FTTH reach. “As cable operators migrate to FTTH to address the market, they will need to find a way to service existing customers in MDUs that lack fiber,” he said in a release announcing the MoCA platform. “MoCA is an easy and cost-effective method to do so.”
A new backbone
While the emphasis of the work ElbertonNET is doing is on building out a new last-mile fiber network, the provider is also going to create a new backbone.
Nokia is also supplying its IP/MPLS routing solutions, including its interconnect and service routers, which will support the city’s growing broadband demands. When the 24-month process is complete, the only thing that will remain from the existing system is the physical head end.
There’s a routing configuration that will replace the current IP routers in the ElbertonNET network. ZCorum will assist with installing new redundant routers.
“The existing headend will be reconfigured,” Skinner said. “We will be dropping in two very large Nokia chassis with external devices to transport that signaling transport back and forth, so it’s a heavy lift.”
During the pre-installation process, ZCorum will bring the major broadband and routing components into its facility. The company will then rack them in its lab area. After testing is completed, ZCoum packs up the physical gear platforms and takes them to the site, and then goes through the installation.
Skinner said that ElbertonNet is one of many providers that it has helped construct and pre-test custom network elements before they were deployed in the field.
“We have had great success even with doing this process with other providers around the country,” Skinner said. “During this process, we’ll put all of the network elements back together and have engineers on site to provide support.”
He added that we’d rather “burn it in our lab versus burning it in the field and realizing that we have to replace something.”
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Sean Buckley
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