Stimulus winner Rural Telephone targets 100 Mb/s to the home

While some rural telcos protest proposed modifications to the Universal Service fund that would support only 4 Mb/s service to the home, one rural telco is moving ahead with plans to deploy a fiber to the home network supporting speeds up to 100 Mb/s service to sparsely populated areas of western Kansas.

The deployment is made possible by $101 million in funding through the Broadband Stimulus Program, which was awarded on a 50/50 grant/loan basis to Rural Telephone, a rural ILEC that also has CLEC operations. Like some other carriers that won broadband stimulus funding, Rural Telephone has opted to use equipment with which it is already familiar. The company plans to deploy the same fiber to the home equipment from Occam Networks that underlies the company's existing FTTH infrastructure. The cost of the access equipment represents about 15% of the cost of an FTTH deployment, Occam Networks' vice president of marketing Russ Sharer told Connected Planet. A large portion of the money will go toward labor—and as Sevier explained, a significant amount of construction dollars will be spent in western Kansas. Rural Telephone plans to do some of the installation itself and was also able to identify two local construction companies that were qualified to do this type of work. In addition the company has selected three companies from outside the area to work on the project.