Shawnee Communications, an independent telco that serves residents and businesses in rural Southern and Central Illinois communities, has selected Ribbon's NPT IP Routing solution for broadband aggregation.
Broadband has been a clear priority for Shawnee. 2018 the provider was among the top 100 winners of the FCC’s America Fund Phase II (CAF II) auction. The auction distributed around $1.5 billion to telecommunications companies so they could deploy services to rural areas.
Shawnee Communications exchanges are Cave-In-Rock, Eddyville, Elim Springs, Elizabethtown, Equality, Golconda, Goreville, Hammond, Herod, Hicks, Lake of Egypt, Leamington, Renshaw, Ridgway, Rosiclare, Simpson and Lovington and Vienna. The service provider currently offers a mix of fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) and broadband wireless in various Central Illinois markets, offering two main speed tiers: 100 and 500 Mbps.
With their modular design, chassis redundancy, and support for multiple routing technologies, Ribbon's IP routers deliver resiliency and traffic protection while eliminating the need for duplicate devices at each site.
Ribbon and Shawnee already had a long-standing relationship. "Ribbon has been a trusted partner for many years, supporting us with voice solutions, and leveraging their expertise for broadband aggregation was a natural fit," said Ben McCameron, General Manager for Shawnee Communications. "Their US-based post-sales support and network staging services offer additional peace of mind as we focus on providing our customers with the high speed, resilient capacity our increasingly digital environments demand."
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