Fiber Forward Q3 - 2023

“Ladies and Gentlemen, Start Your Engines!”

Operators everywhere have a great opportunity to close the digital divide, but we all know this comes with many challenges. Adtran and ADVA have now formally combined, enabling us to make an even bigger di erence for YOU by o ering a true end-to-end ber solution portfolio.

•Subscriber and Enterprise

•Access and Aggregation

•Optical Networking

•Comprehensive Open, Cloud-Centric Software

•Stronger Local Support, Services, and R&D

Connect with us at Fiber Connect Aug. 20-23 – Kissimmee, FL

Proud Diamond Sponsor

REDUCE THE RISK

If you’re considering a fiber broadband deployment for your community but the risks involved are holding you back, consider EPB. Our end-to-end portfolio of solutions can help you accelerate your speed to market, increase your ROI and establish a foundation for success. We feel privileged to share our fourteen years of experience in this changing marketplace with you.

Visit epb.com/broadbandsolutions to learn more.

Gary Bolton, FBA President & CEO

Dear FBA Members,

On June 26th, the fiber industry celebrated at the White House as President Biden announced $42.45B NTIA BEAD broadband infrastructure funding allocations to each of the states and territories. As this issue’s cover suggests, the states are now “off to the races” as they work to submit their five-year plans and initial proposals to NTIA. The President and Commerce Secretary Raimondo highlighted that we will be building the critical infrastructure to connect every American with quality, affordable high-speed broadband by 2030. This is the moment that we have been working toward for our entire careers. I cannot imagine a more exciting time in our industry and the positive impact that our efforts will have on generations to come.

The Fiber Broadband Association completed its fourth Regional Fiber Connect workshop this year in Lake Tahoe and you can see the momentum continuing to build. The registrations for our Fiber Connect 2023 annual conference in Orlando are on record pace so it is going to be an amazing event and a perfect time for our industry to come together as we prepare to execute and close our nation’s digital divide. At this year’s conference, we will have over 225 speakers, five pre-conference workshops, seven educational session breakout tracks, and Tech Deep Dives with the Broadband Forum. We are also very excited about the five Operator Light Talks during the general sessions, where ISP executives will share how they will enable disruption within specific markets and industries once fiber is deployed. Also new for 2023 is the C-Suite Forum, which brings together executives from our premier members for peer-level talks on the issues facing our industry. The conference will culminate with The State Broadband Summit on the final day, August 23.

In this issue of Fiber Forward, we provide a quick breakdown on the NTIA BEAD funding allocations, and I think you will enjoy “Louisiana Shifts into High for BEAD” as our friend Veneeth Iyengar, Louisiana’s State Broadband Director, has been working hard to be the first off the line in the race to get fiber to every citizen of his state. The other states and territories will follow suit, on different timelines and pace, depending on their readiness.

Also in this issue are some wonderful stories on network operators and communities that are having some amazing success in their efforts to connect their subscribers with fiber. You will want to check out the articles on Google Fiber and Lumos Fiber closing the digital divide, Hardy Telecommunications celebrating a decade of fiber, and Sky Fiber Internet’s fiber build in Northern Nevada. As we work to improve efficiencies and reduce cost, this issue covers a lot of ground with building better networks with internet exchanges and CDNs, and “Smart Home Services = Smart Business.”

Our editor-in-chief and the staff working on Fiber Forward continue to advance the quality of content. I hope you enjoy this issue and I hope to see you all at Fiber Connect 2023 in Orlando in August. This is such an amazing time and opportunity for our industry. We are so thankful for our amazing team at the Fiber Broadband Association, which includes our professional staff, our incredible volunteers, our board, and our strategic partners. I hope everyone is having as much fun as we are!

Sincerely,

About the Cover

On May 30, 1953, at the Indianapolis 500, Wilbur Shaw first gave the starting call of “Gentlemen, start your engines!” Some variation of this call has been used every year since then, with the opening periodically changing to “Ladies and Gentlemen” for the years when female drivers are competing. The fiber broadband industry is at the starting line as well in a race to connect every American to fiber broadband. Fueled by funding from federal agencies, including the $42.45 billion injection by NTIA’s BEAD program, each state broadband office is racing to complete its BEAD Action Plan based on the BEAD funding state allocations announced by President Biden on June 26, 2023.

We had a great deal of fun designing the cover for this issue with the original idea to feature NASCAR coming from Editor in Chief Doug Mohney and the entire Fiber Forward team contributing ideas for state car designs and other elements within the cover art. The beauty of what is happening right now in our industry is that, unlike NASCAR races, there won’t be just one winner. Millions of Americans will win as they are connected to fiber broadband for the first time. Thousands of communities win as fiber broadband begins to impact local economics, create job possibilities, and improve municipal, healthcare, and educational services. It’s a good time to be a part of this industry as we’re now off to the races!

The cover was once again created by the talented Raleigh-based Illustrator Alice Holleman (www.AliceHolleman.com). It blends the iconic start of a NASCAR race with the style of paintings of celebrated artist LeRoy Neiman who used bright palettes to capture sporting events from tennis to horse racing to motorsports. Enjoy!

BRINGING BROADBAND

“Ladies and Gentlemen, Start Your Engines!”

Editor’s Moment

Don’t Take Fiber’s Next Decade for Granted

By Doug Mohney, Editor-in-Chief

For Fiber Connect 2023 attendees, welcome to Orlando! The week of August 20-23 is going to be full of recording, meetings, and several panels to moderate. Hopefully, I’ll have a chance to talk to some of you during the show.

As fiber to the home enters its third decade, nearly every household in the United States may have access to fiber by the time we get to its fourth decade of deployment. Given the continued investments in infrastructure taking place through ARPA, BEAD, and other federal programs bringing new networks online to unserved and underserved locations, along with private sector funding replacing the legacy of copper and coax, many believe it’s not just possible but likely to meet the Biden Administration’s goal for nearly every household to get fiber by 2030.

Such a transition would be remarkable, moving fiber from select neighborhoods to every household in forty years, a pace faster than electrification or the arrival of the original voice telephone network – and no party lines to boot! It took forty years for electricity to move from its initial experiments to a utility for most cities and towns and roughly another two decades to bring electricity to more than 90% of U.S. farms.

However, building networks is relatively simple, but getting people on them in a sustainable fashion, especially those most at risk, will be the bigger long-term challenge. Make no mistake, there’s a significant difference between the original metric of homes passed by fiber as compared to the newer benchmarks of homes connected and homes using fiber, with the last one by far the hardest to reach. For a household to use fiber to its fullest potential, it has to be able to afford service, have appropriate devices for content creation, and the skills and knowledge to put everything together.

COVID provided many “lessons learned” around broadband that are worth repeating, given the impetus it has provided to fiber deployment. Not everyone has the tools or skills to

participate in today’s digital economy. Cell phones are good for content consumption but are limited for content creation due to screen size and user interface. Writing term papers, doing your taxes, and editing videos are all examples of work that need keyboards and bigger screens.

Service providers large and small are acutely aware of the gap between home passed and homes using fiber and working to close the digital divide with creative solutions combining government and private sector resources with community-tailored solutions for affordability, engagement, and education. Cookiecutter approaches don’t work because of the unique characteristics of each neighborhood.

Another area outside of the digital divide I hope gets some attention is bringing verticals up to 21st century infrastructure. One of the greatest headaches of modern business travel is ending up at a hotel without fiber connectivity and modern Wi-Fi. More services are in the cloud every day, but few hotel operators have kept pace with upgrading network infrastructure once they plugged in their routers back in 2010.

Bringing Gig or faster fiber with a managed Wi-Fi 7 solution to the hospitality industry should be a priority we can all get behind, as well as getting hotels to offer more broadband-friendly Wi-Fi plans to guests instead of the annoyance of multi-tier pay plans with no quality-ofservice guarantees attached.

If you see me in the halls or at meal time at Fiber Connect, please feel free to say hello! I’m always looking for new stories – your stories – for Fiber Forward.

Sincerely,

Source:OpenAI,DALL-E

Broadband Permitting Reform A WORK-IN-PROGRESS

As communities across the nation gear up to build once-ina-generation fiber broadband networks, one challenge to do so effectively and swiftly is paperwork, more specifically the permits necessary to access and build through public rights-of-way and infrastructure. Government agencies, service providers, and other stakeholders would like to see the process of permitting for fiber construction to be streamlined to deliver 21st century infrastructure more rapidly to every household in the United States by 2030.

For any construction project, time is money. Delays in construction mean crews are left idling, or worse unavailable because they’ve moved on to another project, ultimately adding to costs when labor becomes available. Inflation too plays a role, with salaries and the cost of materials going up over time.

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology passed a bill submitted by Representative Earl “Buddy”

By Doug Mohney

Carter on May 24, 2023, to speed up broadband deployment through streamlining state and local permitting processing, reducing permitting barriers on federal property, and removing cumbersome environmental and historical review processes for broadband deployment in certain circumstances.

“While the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act was a missed opportunity, this proposal is an important step in unleashing innovation and turbocharging public and private investment,” said Rep. Carter. “These changes will allow internet providers to focus their time and energy on what matters most: connecting all Americans.”

In June, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce reported on permitting reform to the full House of Representatives, but the Senate had yet to take up the issue.

“It’s a long way from becoming law,” said Tom Cohen, Fiber Broadband Association’s chief

regulatory and

general counsel and a partner at Kelly Drye & Warren LLP. “The House bill came out of the Energy and Commerce Committee on a divided vote, which indicated a tough road ahead. It is a favorable bill to the fiber industry, although the cities are the ones who oppose it. This is the perennial fight between the industry, which wants to facilitate access to public rights-of-way and infrastructure, and the cities, counties, and sometimes states who believe it is their responsibility to oversee and control access to those resources that they believe best fits the public interest.”

Cohen noted the bill codified favorable decisions of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) during Chair’s Ajit Pai’s term that expedite access to rights-of-way, establish a formal structure for access fees that are cost-based, and extend the concept of a reasonable timeframe for states and local governments to consider applications to access rightsof-way and infrastructure. It also had a provision to deal with access to railroad crossings at the national level.

The National Broadband Plan said that access to public rights-of-way, infrastructure, and poles could add as much as 20% to the cost of network build, said Cohen, but the laws governing pole attachment and access for cities and the states go back to 1978 and the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Changing those laws is a process.

“Cities and the fiber industry all understand their people want fiber,” Cohen stated. “In most instances, it works.

But there are enough instances where it doesn’t. We have the FCC decisions, and the courts are hearing a lot of cases on those that will hopefully narrow the areas of disagreement. I think that’s more likely than national permitting reform. Some states individually are doing good things, like California did microtrenching. Hopefully, the states will come up with improvements on their own because, again, they want their people to get fiber.”

Cohen pointed to the FBA’s “Recommendations to Further Improve Government Permitting Processes to Expedite the Deployment of Fiber Broadband to All Americans” document released in July as guidance for national, state, and local governments on how they can adopt permitting policies, processes, and standards to facilitate more expeditious access to fiber broadband infrastructure.

Local governments would prefer that a single permitting policy not flow out of Washington but let conditions on the ground and community stakeholders set the terms for engagement.

“From the local government perspective, we view ourselves as partners in the deployment of broadband infrastructure projects and working with providers, whether it be directly through a partnership or indirectly

through some of the many roles we actually talked about on the [June 28, 2023] Fiber for Breakfast podcast,” said Seamus Dowdall, Associate Legislative Director for Telecommunications & Technology, National Association of Counties (NACo). “When we see legislation be proposed to seek to uniformly enact a standard to every local government across the country, we have concern because we want to not stifle the progress that is being made between local governments and their state broadband offices, and between state broadband offices and prospective providers through the BEAD program, for example, to call out a federal program.

“There’s a lot of energy and collaboration happening in the broadband deployment space right now. And we view that as positive. We have counties that are absolutely ready to get high speed internet access to unserved and underserved residents that have not seen this infrastructure before and if they did, it was with technologies of the past.”

Throughout his discussion with Fiber Forward, Dowdall repeatedly emphasized the role of county governments as partners from start to finish. “You’ll find that a lot of counties are thinking very strategically about the permitting processes, about their role in infrastructure deployment, to the effect where we don’t feel that Congress needs to act in this space, because of the progress that the counties have made and that we’re seeing through collaboration at the inter-governmental level.”

NACo feels the House bill has a wide-reaching approach from fee assessment and establishing timelines or shot clocks to some of the other provisions. “We fear that this may incentivize some providers to not seek out their county or their local government as a supporter and a partner in a project and instead move forward without the support and assistance of a county or at the city or other level. This can lead to confusion which can ultimately slow a project down.”

As stakeholders accountable to their citizens, local governments are well aware of their role in supporting fiber projects. “Counties recognize that permitting for infrastructure projects should be expedient,” said Dowdall. “It should be accessible for providers that are ready to build out, particularly to unserved and underserved areas. Counties take their role as local coordinators of infrastructure seriously and passionately and we view a lot of the progress being made on this front as positive.”

Dowdall noted that fiber wasn’t just a service provider issue at the end of the day. “We want to be involved in the planning of deployment at the earliest stages possible because we know that residents will make two calls if they have problems with their infrastructure,” he said. “The first will be to the provider and the second will be to their local government.”

FBA Public Policy Update

By Marissa Mitrovich, FBA Vice President of Public Policy

Fiber Across America

On June 26th, in a historic event in the East Room of the White House, President Biden announced funding allocations to states and territories, stating this funding will ensure “connectivity will happen by 2030.” Secretary of Commerce Raimondo emphasized that “what this announcement means for people across the country is that if you don’t have access to quality, affordable high-speed internet service now –you will, thanks to President Biden and his commitment to investing in America.” And, as President Biden stated, “this connectivity will happen by 2030.”

I was honored to represent FBA at the White House for this historic “Internet for All” event, which will bring America one step closer to closing the digital divide. I was joined in the East Room by approximately 150 policy, industry, and community leaders.

Prominently displayed on the stage for the event were Made in America fiber reels provided by FBA members. President Biden pointed out in his remarks that laying fiber optic cable will not only help increase the quality of life in communities and close the digital equity gap, building fiber optic networks will create thousands of well-paying jobs across the nation. FBA is in complete agreement, and we know that building and training a stronger workforce is a critical component to deployment that should be a main focal point for the Administration, Congress, and state leaders.

This day was one for the ebooks, because the country is one step closer to connecting all Americans to affordable, reliable fiber networks.

Public Policy Outlook

Broadband Equity, Access, and Development Grants

Now that the federal government has announced the funding allocations, there are many action items that will follow.

Formal Allocations

States, D.C., and territories (“Eligible Entities”) received their formal notice of allocation on June 30, 2023. Under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), Eligible Entities (States and Territories) have 180 days from that date to submit their Initial Proposals describing how they propose to run their grant programs. Once the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) approves an Initial Proposal, which will occur on a rolling

basis, Eligible Entities will be permitted to request access to at least 20% of their allocated funds. Eligible Entities also will need to include in their Initial Proposals a proposed Challenge Process to accurately identify unserved and underserved locations. On June 28th, NTIA released final guidance for the Challenge Process, which Eligible Entities will need to follow.

Uniform Guidance

FBA has responded to NTIA’s Request for Comment seeking input on the extent of any exemptions from the Uniform Guidance, 2 CFR 200, that may help facilitate the implementation of the BEAD Program. This guidance will help bring needed clarity to grant applicants and the contractors, workers, and others who support these projects.

Broadband Maps

On July 3rd, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a notice informing broadband providers that they

FBA member Prysmian provided the fiber spools and cabling for the Administration’s state funding allocation media event. Source: Prysmian Group.

are required to submit their January 1-June 30, 2023, data for the Broadband Data Collection by September 1st. This information will be used to create the next iteration of the National Broadband Map, which will be released later this year. The National Broadband Map provides critical data for Eligible Entities to use in their Challenge Processes.

Extremely High Cost Per Location Threshold

In implementing the BEAD Program, NTIA has prioritized the deployment of all-fiber connectivity and now Eligible Entities need to make this fiber priority a reality by establishing the Extremely High Cost Per Location Threshold. Along with our research partner Cartesian and industry partner NTCA, FBA has come out with updated research and models to help Eligible Entities undertake this task. Look for a continued rollout of these recommendations this summer and early fall.

Permitting

In getting all Americans connected to high-performance broadband service, Congress, the Administration, and state and local leaders continue to focus on ensuring broadband projects funded by private investment and the government are completed expeditiously. FBA urges federal, state, local government entities, providers, and other stakeholders to work together to evaluate the rules and processes for accessing public and private rights-of-way and infrastructure and make reasonable additions and modifications to

facilitate access. To assist in that effort, FBA has published our Recommendations to Further Improve Government Permitting Processes to Expedite the Deployment of Fiber Broadband to All Americans, which we have shared with policymakers and can be found on the FBA website.

Give Me Five, FCC

President Biden nominated Anna Gomez to fill the fifth Commissioner seat at the FCC and also renominated Brendan Carr and Geoffrey Starks for a second term to the FCC. FBA supports confirmation of all three nominees. On July 12, 2022, the Senate Commerce Committee reported these nominations. We are hopeful that the full Senate will confirm all three nominees later this year – as the U.S. is in the midst of an enormous investment cycle to bring high-performance broadband service, especially fiber connectivity, to every household, business, and anchor institution, as well as to support 5G/6G, smart cities and grids, and other advanced technologies and to help make that happen, we need a five-member FCC.

Affordable Connectivity Program

FBA participated in the “Affordable Connectivity Program Week of Action” in June to spread awareness and tell the story of how this program is helping to close the digital divide for students, their families, and all Americans. FBA will continue to focus on initiatives to raise awareness about the importance of this program and advocate for continued funding as the funds will run out in 2024.

Middle Mile Grant Awards

On June 16th, NTIA announced $930 million to expand middle mile high-speed internet infrastructure across 35 states and Puerto Rico. There were over $7 billion in application requests, highlighting the importance of continued attention to middle mile broadband deployment.

Debt Ceiling Agreement, Impact on Broadband

President Biden signed into law the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 which suspends the public debt limit through January 1, 2025, and prevents any default. As part of the agreement, funding for some broadband related programs – none included in the IIJA -- was clawed-back, but this will have minimal effect, as most of the funds of the impacted programs has already been spent. Impacted: FCC Telehealth Program from CARES, Connecting Minority Communities Pilot Program, the Broadband Infrastructure Program and Tribal Connectivity Fund, and the unobligated balances of amounts made available under Rural Utilities Service—Distance Learning, Telemedicine, and Broadband Program.

Farm Bill

FBA supports the ReConnecting Rural America Act led by Senators Welch (D-VT) and Marshall (R-KS) and Representatives Nunn (R-IA), Craig (D-MN), LaHood (R-IL), and Sorensen (D-IL). This legislation would make the ReConnect Program permanent and set the minimum level of service for broadband deployment at 100/100 Mbps.

Fiber is Bright, Deep in the Heart of TX

In May, FBA hosted donuts and coffee with the Texas State Legislature, our members, and fiber allies at the State Capitol in Austin. It was an exciting time, as the Legislature was negotiating to provide $5 billion in funding to connect all Texans. SB 1238, led by Senator Nichols and Representative Ashby, which includes a preference for fiber broadband projects, passed shortly thereafter and was signed into law by Governor Abbott.

FBA Summer Happy Hour

FBA cohosted our summer happy hour in Washington, D.C., on July 12th, along with the NTCA—The Rural Broadband Association, the Telecommunications Industry Association, and the Wireless Infrastructure Association. Policy staff enjoyed Potomac views while discussing favorite topics like the FCC Commissioner nominations, BEAD state funding allocations, and funding the Affordable Connectivity Program, all while discussing summer vacation and travel plans!

Fiber Broadband Association Public Policy Leadership

The FBA Public Policy Committee is led by co-chairs Chris Champion, Vice President, Government Affairs, C Spire, and Jordan Gross, Manager of Federal Government Affairs, Corning. Ariane Schaffer, Government & Public Policy, Google Fiber is the FBA Board Liaison. If your company is interested in joining the public policy committee, please email mmitrovich@fiberbroadband.org to join.

BUILDING A BETTER NETWORK: IXC, CDN, and other tools

Today’s broadband networks are a lot more than a “bunch of pipes” connected by routers. Ensuring a quality user experience requires network operators to work with Internet Exchanges (IX), Content Delivery Networks (CDN), caches, and cybersecurity providers to reduce network hops and latency while protecting data traffic from interruption by bad actors.

Operators of IXs and CDNs have a symbiotic relationship with service providers. As more service providers tap into their connections and available data, IXs and CDNs become more valuable with the amount of traffic and data that flow through them. Similarly, the more data cache and

By Doug Mohney

cybersecurity providers can compile across the internet, the better those services become.

Swapping bits directly – The IX

The concept of the Internet Exchange dates to the earliest days of commercial Internet. Large internet service providers found mutual benefit in “peering,” simply exchanging traffic directly with each other as equals without keeping track of how much traffic one or the other moved between the two networks. As peers, ISPs didn’t have to conduct laborious accounting exercises as to which one moved more data into the other’s network and had to “settle” or pay for the extra data traffic every month.

From its Network Operations Center, Akamai distributes and monitors the flow of content around the globe. Source: Akamai.

Smaller service providers and content providers using a larger service provider network pay transit fees to use the larger provider’s network to get to other parts of the network since the larger service provider is handling the data traffic and making sure it is properly routed to all the different parts of the internet it needs to go.

“Internet exchanges give you the ability to bypass major IP transit providers and connect directly with the party that your traffic is destined for,” said Offir Schwartz, Founder & CEO, Capcon Networks. “They offer the ability to connect to the content providers, the Netflix or Disney+ of the world, providing a bypass so you can hand your traffic off directly to those content providers without having to pay a middleman or a transit provider for that traffic.”

Tapping into an IX delivers numerous advantages to a service provider, with broadband cost being a major factor, Schwartz said during a May Fiber for Breakfast podcast. Using an Internet Exchange to move traffic can offer direct savings of anywhere from 15% to 35% or greater per megabyte of data when compared to the purchase of IP transit from a Tier 1 service provider. Since the Tier 1 provider is no longer the middleman for connecting to other ISPs and content providers, there’s improved latency because there are few numbers of hops between source and destination and better reliability since providers can connect directly to cloud services directly through an exchange.

“Every [megabyte of data] that is sent out via an Internet Exchange at a lower cost per meg is one less meg of traffic that needs to be paid using transit to an upstream internet provider,” said Schwartz. “If you think about it in those terms, every meg I send out via an Internet Exchange is not only a cost saving to me but is one more user I’m serving better.”

Internet Exchanges reside at regional carrier hotels in major cities such as Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York City, and Northern Virginia. A service provider would get transport to the neutral carrier hotel and then arrange for network crossconnections in a common “Meet Me” room containing many fiber and port connections.

Going to an IX means a service provider can gain direct network access to the most desired content without a middleman, such as Apple, Amazon, Disney, Netflix, and others, while not having to pay for transit fees to an up-stream provider while eliminating network hops and improving performance for the end user.

“It’s also attractive for content providers like Netflix,” Schwartz said. “The Netflix and Hulus of the world need to distribute content further out to the edge [of the network] and closer to the edge. Connecting to them via IX means they don’t have to pay transit fees either.”

Capcom Networks was spun off from GTT Corporation in late 2017 and focuses on the needs of rural internet

service providers, working with over 50 municipalities, electric and telephone cooperatives, and utilities that serve over 500,000 homes and businesses. It recently created the Connect-IX service with Germany’s DECIX internet exchange to enable rural broadband providers to gain access to the advantages of IX.

“Capcon Networks has extensive experience optimizing bandwidth and delivering capacity and connectivity to rural network operators; Connect-IX is the next iteration of how we are innovating for the benefit of rural communities,” said Schwartz.

DE-CIX started operations in 1995, and its’ international network of exchanges moves more than 14 terabits per second of peak traffic between internet service providers and data centers today. Capcon’s Connect-IX services enable rural carrier access to DE-CIX U.S. exchanges in Chicago, Dallas, New York, and Phoenix, with others to be added in the future.

The U.S.’s geography has made it challenging to implement IX services across the county. “You have these pockets of major NFL cities that have become stand-up peering gateways for the United States,” Schwartz stated. “There are about eight of them.”

Bringing Content to the People – CDNs

As the Internet grew by leaps and bounds in the late ‘90s and into the first decade of the 21st century, large software firms such as Adobe, Apple, and Microsoft found themselves challenged to deliver updates effectively over the new medium. Users from around the globe would end up overloading a single location, causing bottlenecks on servers and networks to the detriment of everyone. The solution to breaking the bottleneck and ensuring the

Akamai Vice President of Technology Christian Kaufmann oversees a network of over 350,000 distribution servers around the world.

Source: Akamai.

continued growth of the Internet was the Content Delivery Network (CDN), a concept first developed at MIT and became the company known as Akamai.

“The idea is that we have customers who want to distribute their content all over the world” said Christian Kaufmann, Vice President of Technology, Akamai. “One of the key attributes is that we want to have [content] as close as possible to the end user. If you sit in Virginia, then we will serve you from a server which is close to Virginia or D.C. rather than from L.A. or Europe because the latency affects the service.”

Arguably, Akamai is the original “edge network” service, putting important data close to the user rather than having them travel thousands of miles and multiple router hops to access the latest software update or latest HBO streaming hit.

“Your throughput actually goes down if you’re further away from the server, so it takes longer until you have received all the data,” said Kaufmann. . By placing a server very close to you, throughput goes up, latency goes down, and that is the user experience we want to have. That’s why content owners come to us.”

Service providers gain two benefits by having Akamai servers on-site or accessible through an IX. With good connectivity, end users get content quicker and higher quality streaming, resulting in happier customers. Having access to a CDN via an IX connection or, better yet, within your core network, reduces ingoing and outgoing customer traffic. “Because it goes into your [CDN] cache and then it gets distributed to your end users, there’s a cost-saving aspect because you aren’t paying transit each time. That traffic remains locally.”

companies. If you are downloading anything important or popular, the odds are very good that it’s being provided through Akamai’s CDN.

Service providers pulling enough data from Akamai servers in the neighborhood of 20 to 30 Gbps can be a part of the Akamai Accelerated Network Partner program, with Akamai service deployed directly within their network. Akamai provides a cluster of servers and standardized maintenance for free while the service provider supplies the onsite rack space, power, and IP address space to plug in everything.

“For our on-net cache program called AANP (Akamai Accelerated Network Partnership), there’s no one size fits all. We don’t have a specific server setup,” said Kaufmann. “We look at how much traffic we’re sending to your network, and we look at your AS number since we’re already serving it from somewhere already. Looking at the traffic levels and the peaks, we will build a cluster for you that will last one to three years.”

Server configurations get more complex with the size of the network, with regional and national providers likely to get larger server clusters capable of supporting more end users and more server clusters distributed geographically for reduced latency and bandwidth within the network as well as for resilience purposes. A national service provider may want options that include servers in different cities, access to Akamai CDN resources through peering if a server goes down, and/or the ability to fallover between Akamai servers within their network boundaries.

HOW DO INTERNET EXCHANGES WORK?

Today, Akamai is the largest CDN platform in the world, valued at $14 billion with 10,000 employees. It has more than 350,000 distribution servers in place at over 1,400 networks around the globe in more than 130 countries, with a client list that includes all the top 10 video streaming services, all the top 10 software companies, 8 of the top 10 telecommunication providers, and 19 of the top 20 video game companies.

Akamai’s customer list also includes a vast enterprise component, including 16 of the top 20 banks, 16 of the top 20 retail companies, 13 of the top 20 healthcare providers, 8 of the top 10 healthcare payers, 7 of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies, and 7 of the top 10 automotive

Once installed, Akamai handles the entire data distribution chain on the CDN, regularly loading and refreshing data so users get the best experience, with the content creators paying Akamai in exchange for their content to be efficiently distributed and available at low latency for end users around the world, be it software updates, web site content, or 4K streaming video.

Kaufmann noted that Akamai has evolved far past its original service. “We have evolved quite a bit from a pure CDN offering,” he said. “We have added security products so we can deliver content securely and help protect our customers against cyberattacks. Our latest division is cloud computing, so that enterprises can build and run distributed workloads and applications at scale. All three work quite nicely together.”

(cont. on page 57)

Source: Capcon Networks

State BEAD Allocations Announced

By Doug Mohney

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris announced plans for the allocation of $42.45 billion in Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program grant funding at a June 26, 2023, event at the White House to showcase the administration’s ongoing infrastructure investments through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

“Let us agree in the 21st century in America, high-speed Internet is not a luxury, it is a necessity. Every person in our nation, no matter where they live, should be able to access and afford high speed internet,” said President Biden. “What we’re doing is not unlike Franklin Delano Roosevelt did, [when] we brought electricity to nearly every American home and farm in our nation. Along with other federal investments, we’re going to be able to connect every person in America to reliable high-speed internet by 2030.”

Eight and a half million households and small businesses are in areas where there is no high-speed internet infrastructure, while millions more have limited or unreliable internet options. The announcement — the largest internet federal funding announcement in history — was welcome news for the nation and the fiber industry.

Let us agree in the 21st century in America, high-speed Internet is not a luxury, it is a necessity. Every person in our nation, no matter where they live, should be able to access and afford high speed internet

– President Joe Biden

President Biden at June 26, 2023 White House event announcing state BEAD allocations.

Source: The White House.

“The Fiber Broadband Association was honored to join President Biden and senior Administration officials today at the White House in celebrating the allocation of $42.5 billion of broadband funding enabled by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act,” said Gary Bolton, President and CEO, Fiber Broadband Assocation. “The Association appreciates the leadership of the President in bringing the country one step closer to closing the digital divide and Administration’s prioritization of fiber to connect all U.S. residents with reliable, high-speed broadband.”

The White House asserts with BEAD allocations and other Biden administration investments, all 50 states, D.C. and territories now have the resources to connect every resident and small business to reliable, affordable high-speed internet by 2030. BEAD awards range from $27 billion to over $3.3 billion, with every state receiving a minimum of $107 million, according to a White House fact sheet released on the 26th. Nineteen states received allocations over $1 billion, with the top 10 allocations for Alabama, California, Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and Washington.

THE BIG 10 BEAD ALLOCATIONS – BY AMOUNT

Texas was the clear winner by far with over $3.3 billion in BEAD funding, but also has the most work to do, with more 779,000 unserved, according to the most recent Federal Communication Commission (FCC) data. Other broadband funding awards recently announced by the Administration and highlighted in the White House fact sheet include over $700 million in USDA ReConnect awards and over $900 million in NTIA Middle Mile awards. States are also using billions allocated under American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to build out broadband networks.

But the country will get more than high-speed connectivity for everyone from the BEAD investment. “Laying fiber optic cable will not only help increase the quality-of-life in communities and close the digital equity gap, but as President Biden pointed out in his remarks, building fiber optic networks is also creating thousands of good paying jobs across the nation,” said Bolton.

The funding will support manufacturing jobs and bring in private sector investment by using materials made in America. The White House fact sheet cites investments this year by fiber optic manufacturers CommScope and Corning who are expanding their domestic manufacturing capacity with $47 million and $500 million projects, creating hundreds of good-paying jobs in North Carolina.

U.S. BEAD ALLOCATIONS BY STATE

Alabama $1,401,221,901.77

Alaska $1,017,139,672.42

American Samoa $37,564,827.53

Arizona $993,112,231.37

Arkansas $1,024,303,993.86

California $1,864,136,508.93

Colorado $826,522,650.41

Connecticut $144,180,792.71

Delaware $107,748,384.66

District of Columbia $100,694,786.93

Florida $1,169,947,392.70

Georgia $1,307,214,371.30

Guam $156,831,733.59

Hawaii $149,484,493.57

Idaho $583,256,249.88

Illinois $1,040,420,751.50

Indiana $868,109,929.79

Iowa $415,331,313.00

Kansas $451,725,998.15

Kentucky $1,086,172,536.86

Louisiana $1,355,554,552.94

Maine $271,977,723.07

Maryland $267,738,400.71

Massachusetts $147,422,464.39

Michigan $1,559,362,479.29

Minnesota $651,839,368.20

Mississippi $1,203,561,563.05

Missouri $1,736,302,708.39

Montana $628,973,798.59

Nebraska $405,281,070.41

Nevada $416,666,229.74

New Hampshire $196,560,278.97

New Jersey $263,689,548.65

New Mexico $675,372,311.86

New York $664,618,251.49

North Carolina $1,532,999,481.15

North Dakota $130,162,815.12

Northern Mariana Islands $80,796,709.02

Ohio $793,688,107.63

Oklahoma $797,435,691.25

Oregon $688,914,932.17

Pennsylvania $1,161,778,272.41

Puerto Rico $334,614,151.70

Rhode Island $108,718,820.75

South Carolina $551,535,983.05

South Dakota $207,227,523.92

Tennessee $813,319,680.22

Texas $3,312,616,455.45

U.S. Virgin Islands $27,103,240.86

Utah $317,399,741.54

Vermont $228,913,019.08

Virginia $1,481,489,572.87

Washington $1,227,742,066.30

West Virginia $1,210,800,969.85

Wisconsin $1,055,823,573.71

Wyoming $347,877,921.27

Digitize Your Construction Monitoring.

Network operators and construction companies alike are experiencing the challenge of having comprehensive post-construction documentations, but without the actual as-built comparison regarding the quality of installation. That is where DeepUp comes in. Its intelligent software and proprietary handheld 3D scanner provide an efficient and accurate way to monitor and document network installations. The scanner allows for easy on-site geo-referenced scanning without requiring any prior knowledge or technical expertise. With its intuitive interface and satellite-based monitoring capabilities, DeepUp is an invaluable tool and cloud platform for ensuring the digitalization of network expansion projects.

DeepView.

In Addition, not visible underground networks can be easily relocated with DeepUp‘s Augmented Reality technology helping to avoid unintentional damage to network installations.

Add DeepUp to Your Digital Network Deployment and Worfklow Management.

DeepUp‘s digital solution provides a reality-based network construction monitoring platform that is unparalleled in accuracy and functionality. Our cutting-edge software algorithms offer 1:1 representation of the actual installation, giving you accurate visual as-built confirmation in almost real-time. All recorded 3D scans are made seamlessly available to DeepUp‘s customers via a web-based monitoring system, so that the progress of network construction can be followed from anywhere on the web. Moreover, all widths and depths of underground constructions can be virtually measured and compared to the network plans by the customers themselves, providing an in-depth understanding of all installations.

All Installation Data captured and exported to Your GIS-Platform.

Trenching

Data-Capturing of Complete Open Trench

Horizontal Directional Drilling

Data-Capturing of Entry- & Exit-Points and Surface

Microtrenching

Data-Capturing of Complete Microtrench

Plowing

Data-Capturing of Points along Trajectory

ous underground installation methods. It provides you the required 3D data digitally in

as-built quality, directly from

By Doug Mohney

Louisiana Shifts into High for BEAD

With BEAD allocations announced on June 26, 2023, states, territories, and their respective broadband officers are now moving out of pitching for a larger share of funding and planning how to spend it into the actual business of allocating funding so fiber can be deployed to the towns, neighborhoods, and homes that need it the most.

But there’s still much work to be done before money moves from NTIA to the states for them to allocate to broadband projects. Louisiana has received a reputation for being among the most prepared states to start building networks once funding becomes available with the leader of that effort acknowledging he and his office will be quite busy between now and the time the funds start flowing.

“We have four deliverables to provide to NTIA,” said Veneeth Iyengar, Executive Director, Louisiana Office of Broadband Development and Connectivity, State of Louisiana. “The first is a five-year action plan which we already completed and submitted to the Feds. The second thing is Volume One of our initial proposal, which we have made public on our website, connect.la.gov, for anyone to review and provide comments. Number three is the state’s

first digital equity plan, which is also a public document that people can provide comments and ask questions and [express] concerns. The last major deliverable is Volume Two of the initial proposal, which we will make available for public comment over the next several months. We submit all that to NTIA, they approve it. Then we run a grant round and we submit a final proposal.”

Louisiana is slated to receive $1.36 billion in BEAD funding, according to the June 26 announcement from the Department of Commerce. The state plans to use the funds to extend broadband to around 200,000 unserved and underserved locations, reaching 600,000 Louisianas. Iyengar and Louisiana are committed to delivering highspeed, affordable, reliable Internet access to every citizen in the state, and he’s acutely aware of the challenge ahead. “This is a lot of money that has to be committed, spent, and go to construction in a very short period of time to do something that’s hardly ever been done before,” Iyengar said. “We’ve got to somewhat flawlessly execute between now and over the next four to five years.”

One of the choices states will face is how much money they will request NTIA to obligate above and beyond

Veeneth Iyengar is leading Louisiana’s proactive effort to deliver fiber to all of its citizens. Source: State of Louisiana – Connect LA

the initial 20% available to draw upon between the initial proposal and the submission of the final proposal. “Some states are going to ask for a waiver on the 20% and ask for and obligate the entire amount,” Iyengar said. “Some states will say ‘Give me 20%’ and obligate that amount. Some states may request 40% percent. We’re still working through the material to understand how much to obligate, whether it’s 20% or more.”

Iyengar expects Louisiana will be able to start handing out money to grantees for network construction in the first quarter of 2024, but that’s not soon enough for some communities. “We want to work as quickly as possible because we are time bound in terms of how long we can spend this money,” he said. “But also, we need to work with that sense of urgency. People need this broadband yesterday. The number of people that say, ‘We need; I can’t wait,’ it’s really a little bit disheartening, so we need to get things moving.”

In addition to fighting the clock, Louisiana will have to cope with the weather. “Hurricane season is from June 1 to November,” said Iyengar. “We’ve got weather events that could disrupt a variety of things. There are many weather-related things out of our control, given where we are in Louisiana.” Building underground facilities as much as possible to protect against adverse weather events is a priority, with locations below Interstate 10 underground with areas above it built in a combination of underground and aerial.

On the plus side, Iyengar cited the broadband office’s relationship with the federal government and being able to plan work in advance. “We have a great partnership and working relationship with NTIA,” he said. “They recognize the need to work with a sense of urgency but to do it deliberately and with high quality in terms of the plans they receive. From our perspective, there are a lot of things out of our control that we could work on very tactically now to start stemming some of those execution risk issues around workforce supply chain and we’re doing all of those.”

Louisiana estimates it will need 7,000 people to construct, build, and maintain the fiber networks and is leveraging the state’s community college system to train them. “All the community colleges will offer multiple fiber splicing classes by the end of the year,” said Iyengar. “The governor has committed $10 million for broadband workforce readiness programs from a tuition abatement reimbursement perspective. We’ll probably make a pitch as part of our BEAD plan to use some of our dollars in our initial proposal to help buy hardware and equipment for the community colleges, so they have the necessary equipment like Ditch Witch and whatnot to help train folks… We have to build the workforce organically. It’s a

long game because there isn’t a whole lot of precedent we could point to.”

BEAD monies will enable the state’s ISPs to invest in areas they typically wouldn’t have been in, a unique situation.

“We have to now focus on things that historically haven’t really focused on, which are getting to the hardest-to-reach places and to do it with [an aggressive] timeframe, and so it creates fluidity,” Iyengar said. “It’s a very fluid environment and creates downward pressure. But you know, with great partners, you can execute really well.”

The Louisiana broadband office is conducting periodic services with the ISPs in the state to understand what their supply chains challenges are. “I think the supply chain kinds are going to work out eventually as suppliers and manufacturers ramp up production,” said Iyengar. “For the larger companies, the AT&Ts of the world, it’s less of a challenge. It’s a bit of a challenge for smaller companies, so we are working to understand where the bottlenecks may be between manufacturing and distribution. We’ll have conversations with suppliers and manufacturers and how we can be helpful to them.”

Wrapping up, Iyengar was optimistic because he had the support of the top state executive, his constituents, and one specific association. “We feel good where we are, how we engaged with the people of Louisiana,” he said. “The governor has said as far and deep that we can drive fiber into the state, we will do that, based on cost and needed. We feel good about the relationship we’ve had with Gary Bolton and the folks at the Fiber Broadband Association. They’ve been really good advocates for what we’ve been doing, and we’ve been full advocates of what they’ve been doing.”

Louisiana expects to deliver fiber to an additional 200,000 unserved households across the state. Source: State of Louisiana – Connect LA.

Austin & Lake Tahoe Regional Fiber Connect Photo Gallery

FBA President & CEO Gary Bolton welcomes attendees to the Austin Regional Fiber Connect.

Connect Humanity’s Senior Fellow Jordana Barton-Garcia references FBA’s Broadband Infrastructure Playbook at the Austin Regional Fiber Connect. She is joined by other panelists William Graves from Mid-South Synergy and Melissa Beaudry from Cobb, Fendley & Associates, and moderator John George from OFS & FBA’s Technology Committee Chair.

Greg Conte, Director, Texas Broadband Development Office, explores Texas’ broadband strategy with Marissa Mitrovich, FBA VP of Public Policy, during a Fireside Chat at the Austin Regional Fiber Connect.

Needham & Co’s Ryan Koontz explores federal funding and the economic impact on the fiber broadband industry at the Lake Tahoe Regional Fiber Connect event.

Ariane Schaffer, FBA Board Member and Google Fiber’s Public Policy and Government Affairs Manager, shows her enthusiasm for fiber during a Fireside Chat with Jennifer Harris, NTIA’s Federal Program Officer for Texas, at the Austin Regional Fiber Connect event.

Mark Boxer, FBA Board Member and OFS Technical Manager, discusses workforce development at the Lake Tahoe Regional Fiber Connect event. Panelists included Centranet’s Sachin Gupta, South Valley Internet’s Elisa Brentnall, FBA Board Member and Nex-Tech’s Jimmy Todd, and FBA Board Member and Teleplex’s Gregg Logan.

Source for all photos: FBA.

Brownstone Consultants’ Guillermo Aguilar explores fiber deployment best practices during a Fireside Chat with Scott Jackson from Graybar and FBA Board Member at the Austin Regional Fiber Connect event.

Moderator Heather Burnett Gold from Mears Group Inc and panelist Carol Mattey from Mattey Consulting explore broadband mapping for Texas at the Austin Regional Fiber Connect.

California Public Utilities Commission’s Rob Osborn has a Fireside Chat with Marissa Mitrovich, FBA VP of Public Policy, at the Lake Tahoe Regional Fiber Connect event.

Nextlink Internet’s Claude Aiken enjoys the conversation on broadband mapping at the Austin Regional Fiber Connect event.

FBA President and CEO Gary Bolton conducts a Fireside Chat with Marina MacLatchie, NTIA Federal Program Officer for California at the Lake Tahoe Regional Fiber Connect event.

New Lisbon Holdings’ John Greene, Jr., offers his insight on how fiber impacts economics and opportunity at the Austin Regional Fiber Connect. He is joined by panelists Bob Knight from Harrison Edwards and Eddie Andrews from DxTEL, and moderator Evann Freeman from EPB and FBA’s Conference Committee Chair.

A panel at the Lake Tahoe Regional Fiber Connect event focused on deployment challenges and opportunities. It featured Craighead Cooperative’s Jeremiah Sloan, Ting’s Jason Smith, KGPCo’s Brent Williams, Biarri Networks’ John Tait, and was moderated by FBA Deployment Specialists Committee Chair and Preformed Line Products’ Brendan O’Boyle.

Small town, big thinking

Broadband for the future now

Connect your community with technologies that support tomorrow’s needs today. Our broadband access leadership in the U.S. began with the birth of broadband, extended into the fiber era with GPON, and continues today with XGS and the only 25G PON solution on the market.

Wherever you are in your fiber broadband journey, Nokia can help guide your business towards a successful future. www.nokia.com/networks/rural-broadband

Smart Home Services = Smart Business

By Doug Mohney

Smart home services represent an established and steadily growing opportunity today for service providers, supplying the ability for differentiation in broadband competition as well as adding to the bottom line with monthly recurring revenue. Trying to understand and make sense of the smart home landscape can be complicated, since the table-stakes of managed Wi-Fi easily lead into a maze of cybersecurity and parental offerings, home monitoring, and security services, with a future including energy monitoring, deliver services, and various healthcare monitoring services.

“Smart home services mostly reside around the home security service or a device that has services attached,” said Elizabeth Parks, President and Chief Marketing Officer of analysis and market research firm Parks Associates. “In Q4 2022, 30% of U.S. Internet households own a security system and 11% own a camera or video doorbell without an alarm system for a total of 41% of U.S. internet households that have a security solution.”

Parks Associates has been conducting research and analysis on the impact of IoT, smart home, and connected entertainment technologies for more than 35 years. The firm expects slow and steady growth for the smart home device and smart home services market, with consumers moving away from legacy broadband bundles of TV and landline to value-added packages including mobile phone and other value-added services. “The ARPU [Average

Revenue Per User] of several popular bundles has decreased in price,” said Parks. “The traditional quad-play continues to drop, while pay-TV plus internet has been in decline for some time, but flat during the pandemic.”

Smart home device owners are common adopters of managed Wi-Fi and smart home control services from their ISP, with three or more devices leading to more managed services. Today, the most popular value-added services households purchase include network monitoring for reliability and Wi-Fi performance, cybersecurity that monitors network traffic, and parental control services— often bundled together as a best practice to simplify the subscriber experience.

Social Media Monitoring Emerges

One recent addition to the parental control suite is social media monitoring. ALLO Communications, a regional all-fiber service provider in 40 markets throughout the country, is leveraging its investment in the Calix broadband platform and added the social media monitoring managed service, Bark, to their portfolio based upon what they’ve seen and what their customers want.

“It’s very important for us to not just be a dumb pipe,” said Brad Moline, President and CEO of ALLO. “Security is important, whether it’s cyber or individual security throughout our footprint. Bark on the Calix broadband platform is a means for us to scale social media monitoring

WWT

to parents so they can ensure their children are being treated appropriately, and that some of the real negative parts of the internet don’t impact their loved ones or others that they care about. Our employee base and a lot of people are in that 35- to 45-year-old range, have young children, and are concerned about this and we’re hearing it more and more in our communities.”

ALLO offers Bark as a managed service for $10 per month, with Calix providing it as a turnkey managed service that broadband service providers can deploy and launch in mere days on the Calix platform. Bark uses machine learning and statistical analysis techniques that monitor a child’s text messages, email, and more than 30 of the most popular apps and social media platforms to alert parents and caregivers of issues like cyberbullying, online predators, and sexual content. The service also offers location alerts and makes it easy to manage a child’s screen time and block websites on their cell phone and other devices, whether or not the child is inside or outside the home.

Moline isn’t primarily motivated to make money on Bark. “It isn’t a product that we care necessarily about making any meaningful margin,” he said. “That’s not the purpose of this product. Our view is we should offer a group of services that are important to our customers and then continue to deepen that stack.”

Calix’s incorporation of Bark social media monitoring into its continuously-expanding managed services portfolio falls in line with its philosophy that value-added services are not simply an option, but a necessity. “Speed alone is not a long-term strategy for success,” said Michael Weening, President & CEO, Calix. “We’ve looked across 100 broadband providers. If you give customers multiple speed choices on a fiber network, only 17% of subscribers go for a full gig. Most of them don’t understand speed, they understand speed only if there’s a correlated price. The majority of them, 23%, actually use 100 Mbps or less.”

Through its end-to-end broadband platform, Calix enables service providers to easily deploy, launch, and support incremental and differentiated managed services to their end-customers via the cloud, at the lowest possible operational expense. “Service providers add value to the broadband service with managed offerings versus just being a retailer,” said Weening. “If you’re a retailer, you’re just connecting stuff, so it’s got to be about that full managed experience where the service provider places their brand, and only their brand, in front of their subscribers.”

ALLO was able to implement Bark using Calix in seven days without having to bring in an engineering team, because Calix had spent six months integrating Bark into its platform. The growing portfolio of residential managed services includes support for managed Wi-Fi in the home,

parental controls, cybersecurity, Arlo connected security cameras, and a backup connectivity option for work-fromhomers that enables the in-home router to automatically switch to a cell phone connection in case there’s an interruption of the primary fiber service.

Most recently, Calix has added managed services for small businesses and communities to its portfolio. Calix customers can leverage these services to expand into new markets. The platform offers Calix endless possibilities for expansion so the company can continue to enable their customers to grow value in their communities for decades. “We think there are wellness applications and support for aging in place that service providers can offer,” said Weening. “There are a billion wellness and aging applications out there, it’s so confusing. The local service provider is such a trusted pillar in the community, so they are well-positioned to offer a managed service to people who need those applications.

“We have a number of our customers working with local cooperative hospitals. There’s a very large hospital system that has patient support applications, which could be extended to the community with Calix facilitating the integration of those applications into the service provider. They can offer that to their customers and that gets them aligned to the hospital system, so it’s a win for the entire community.”

Managed Wi-Fi: Extension of Brand, Gateway to More Services

Like Calix, Adtran works with service providers to deliver managed services, but it has taken a more paced approach to what it offers and how it is delivered. “Adtran has been in the residential Wi-Fi space for a long time. We are offering it to over 150 service providers now,” said Michael Sumitra, Solutions Marketing Manager, Adtran. “WiFi has become an extension of their brand. When a service provider is delivering broadband services, they have not just dropped connectivity at the door, but they have to take it inside the home. And it’s when they take it inside the home that Wi-Fi becomes an issue. It’s an incredibly complex environment that you’re getting into, different

Most service providers are delivering managed Wi-Fi services to their customers. Source: Adtran.

Broadband VAS Business Model

Among US Intenet Households Having Specified Value-Added Service

I pay an additional fee for this service Free as part of my internet subscription

A streaming video service

A whole-home cybersecurity service

Fall detection or health monitoring service

Systems that allow you to access or control parts of your home remotely

A service that reduces ping time, latency, or lag when playing online games

A service that monitors or improves Wi-Fi in your home

A service that enhances parental control of online or mobile activities

A service that allows you to manage data use by devices in your home

A technical support and monitoring service

devices, different applications, users. There is a whole lot happening inside the home and a service provider just dropping off a pipe at the door is not enough.”

Managed Wi-Fi becomes an extension of a service provider’s brand and ultimately about managing the customer’s experience in the home, said Sumitra, requiring the right tpe of cloud-managed solution. Adtran offers multiple cloud-managed Wi-Fi options so the service provider can select the best one that meets its operational needs and customer demand.

“Ultimately it’s about the customer experience,” said Sumitra. “What we see from the subscriber point of view are three things that are really important to the end user. What are you looking for when you’re subscribing to a broadband service? You’re looking for Wi-Fi that just works anywhere and everywhere that you need it. Second, you need the ability that whenever there is a problem that happens, your service provider should be able to know what the problem is that you have and be able to resolve it quickly. The third thing is how can the service provider provide me with additional value in terms of going beyond the basic elements that they are offering, whether that’s managed Wi-Fi, but also other things on top, such as smart home enablement.”

Adtran has partnered with Plume to deliver managed Wi-Fi services combined with its Wi-FI 6 service delivery gateways, enabling the service provider the ability to

conduct any Wi-Fi troubleshooting within the home as well as all the way back from there to the physical connection into the service provider.

“The value Adtran brings is the end-to-end management,” said Sumitra. “The home is not just where the issues happen. Adtran provides connectivity from inside the home through managed Wi-Fi all the way back into the core network. We are able to pull insights from any part of the network and provide that to the service provider responding to an issue, whether that’s the [customer service representative] or the NOC engineer resolving those issues.

“If you take the example of the gateway and if there’s an ONT connected to it, there’s a fiber spool running somewhere. The subscriber decides to move that gateway somewhere in the home and it causes a bend in the actual fiber spool that affects the connection. The value is in the fact we’re able to find out what’s the issue with the gateway and problem in the home as well as what’s happening in the upstream network.”

Mosaic One, Adtran’s cloud-based software tool, aggregates information coming in from management and orchestration platforms, broadband access and consumer in-home devices, and then applies AI to streamline the troubleshooting process by providing insights from across the network. By solving problems quicker, customer satisfaction goes up and service providers can close out trouble tickets more efficiently.

© Park Associates

As the Wi-Fi network becomes more complex with the continued introduction of IoT smart home devices, so does the need for the managed service to become more sophisticated to deal with it. “Enabling these IoT devices that are coming into the home is another clear thing that is needed,” said Sumitra. “You’re seeing new standards that are coming up, like the Matter open-source connectivity standard and the underlying thread protocol. How can the service provider enable me to simplify adding these IoT devices? That’s one of the things that’s emerging.”

Adding more IoT devices means managing the security for them, with a managed Wi-Fi service taking care of the choices of putting them on a separate frequency band, such as 2.4 GHz or separating them out and putting them on a VLAN-type of arrangement to isolate them from everything else in the home. “That’s where we see a security specific IoT offering that service providers can look at,” Sumitra said. “IoT security is one of the most popular services that we have seen with our service providers.”

IoT security, parental controls, and content controls for ad blocking are all available as included services through Plume’s software, that do not require additional licenses. “They’re simple things,” said Sumitra. “Just being able to identify the individuals and devices inside the home, being able to assign schedules for them whether that’s school time schedules or bedtimes. Parental control is definitely

the most popular service that we’re seeing being offered on top of Wi-Fi.”

In the near future, managed Wi-Fi services may extend their utility to monitoring the physical space within the home. “You’re seeing this new nascent concept called Sense, which is Wi-Fi sensing using just the Wi-Fi mesh network inside the home for motion detection,” said Sumitra. “It’s physical security, you can monitor your home to check if there’s any activity taking place.”

Adtran is still experimenting with it as an option, but there are some complications. “One of the things that we are having to check is that the sensitivity of the sensing which is happening inside the home,” stated Sumitra. “Is it detecting a human or a smaller thing like a pet inside the home? How do you differentiate between the two? That’s one of the things that we are gauging at the moment, but we definitely see that as something that is going to grow in the future.”

Wi-Fi sensing may also deliver utility for healthcare and elderly care monitoring, detecting and logging daily activity, and perceiving a fall or lack of movement during the day as an event requiring follow-up by a loved one or caregiver, but it will require data analytics and machine learning to tell the differences between an adult, a child, and a pet and what patterns of activity are “normal” and which should be cause for concern.

High Interest in Add-On Home Internet Service by Number of Smart Home Devices Owned

Among US Internet Households Surveyed

A network monitoring service that proactively identifies and remotely resolves network issues

A cybersecurity service that monitors network traffic and every device on the network for malicious behavior

A service that provides tips to optimize network speed

A heat map and network monitoring service that ensures my home has good Wi-Fi coverage

A network monitoring service that alerts me if any devices go offline

A service that provides tools for parental control

Applying Lessons Learned at Google Fiber

By Doug Mohney

Google Fiber’s approach to digital equity is based on hardearned experiences by the company and its current CEO, Dinni Jain, with the community as the focus.

“When I was in the cable industry, there was a point where I was working in Louisville, Kentucky,” said Jain. “Digital equity was a big issue then and that’s when I learned a lot of lessons about good intentions.”

Simply building the network and turning it on didn’t bring the results the cable company was looking for, and pricing didn’t have the expected impact on connecting historically disconnected people to the internet. “We learned our marketing tactics were not as effective in some of those areas, in some cases language issues, and in other cases they were device issues, i.e., not enough devices,” said Jain. “That’s when we really learned the importance of

community outreach. And doing this simply as a provider alone wasn’t going to be enough.”

Jain joined Google Fiber in 2018, having been lured out of retirement from the telecommunication industry by Google Fiber’s spirit of innovation in the parent company’s culture. “It’s the idea that what we have here is a platform to explore big problems that have been difficult to solve today, using some of the benefits that we have being part of Alphabet to try to help solve them.” Google Fiber is, he emphasized, a separate entity from Google, the massive search engine, and is expected to achieve a certain level of business performance. So the fiber solutions it rolls out to communities have to be sustainable.

Among its assets is its track record in building out economically-challenged areas in cities such as Kansas City

Google Fiber CEO Dinni Jain is applying lessons learned by the company and his time in the cable industry to close the digital divide Source: Google Fiber.

(Kansas and Missouri), and Austin, Texas. “We’re not the company that is going to come in and cherry pick based on demographics,” said Jain. “Our digital equity building in Kansas City is as good as you will find in the United States. We didn’t shrink away from areas where there is lower expected demand for our product. We went right in and we built them up… That doesn’t mean we’re going to go and build those areas first. But it also means we’re not going to build them last. We build them as part of the overall construction schedule for that particular market. By the time we get to maturity, we would expect to have a sizable percentage of those areas covered. That’s important to us. That is part of what we’re there to do.” Jain noted that some of the last places Google Fiber has built in the Kansas City metro area were actually some of the more affluent areas, a result of lower densities and increased costs of deployment.

Providing service in economically challenged areas over the long term also means Google Fiber is thinking beyond the status quo on traditional service plans. “I don’t believe that connecting more people to the internet is just about availability and price,” Jain said. “It’s also going to be about challenging some big assumptions for our industry. For a lot of people that are economically stressed, subscription services alone are problematic. We may have to look at enabling

technologies to sell service for day rates or week rates, or things like that will allow participation from time to time without customers feeling like they have to commit to a subscription right now.”

Google Fiber’s approach to digital equity is customized for each market with a government and community affairs manager (GCAM) designing and implementing programs to address specific issues, creating partnership with local library systems, non-profits, and other organizations to address specific needs.

For example, in San Antonio, Texas, Google Fiber created a “Wash and Learn Initiative” (WALI) with nonprofit Libraries Without Borders, because people were spending an average of 90 minutes in laundromats to do their laundry. Pop up locations supported by local business owners were equipped with laptops, tablets, Wi-Fi hotspots, books, and other educational resources so students could do their homework with the digital and physical resources they needed.

Google Fiber is also working to educate non-profit professionals bringing digital equity to their communities through the Digital Inclusion Fellowship program. In cooperation with NTEN, Google Fiber provides year-long

support to fellows, including grant money, orientation, and monthly training focused on program design and project management skills, mentorship with NTEN staff and previous fellows, and connections with a national network of digital inclusion experts. There are 18 fellows in the most recent cohort, the eighth since the program was started.

Shifting from digital equity to Google Fiber’s overall role and position in the marketplace, Jain said the company is a firm believer in the need for a third network provider to complement and provide a competitive drive to the existing duopoly of legacy telephone service providers and incumbent cable providers. “That third network is very likely going to be a network that is primarily fiber based. Right now, there’s a lot of conflation on the term fiber. It is a technology that the telco industry is now rapidly moving to themselves, but in our mind, it’s also symbolically the third network.”

But it won’t be just technology that brings lasting change to the broadband landscape, rather the attitude and philosophy akin to Google Fiber brings to the table with its approach to digital equity. “What fiber allows is a much greater speed and it allows symmetry of that speed,” said Jain. “But it’s only one of three things that needs to change in order for things get much better. It’s speed, price, and

services. While the telephone companies are deploying fiber, which certainly helps speed, it won’t necessarily help the pricing or the service.

“Since the beginning of Google Fiber, way before I got here, it hasn’t been simply that we’re trying to drive fiber to enable gigabit services. We’re enabling gigabit services at price points that we believe make it much more attainable for people. We’ve been at $70 for a gigabit since 2012. It took about 10 years for every competitor we have in every market to get to gigabit services in the neighborhood of $70. We launched 2 Gbps at the end of 2020, the beginning of 2021. It only took 10 months for others to have a 2 Gbps service in the neighborhood of $100.”

Given its stop-and-go history and some of the mistakes it made along the way, Jain acknowledges some might be curious about its long-term commitment. “Part of the issue with Google Fiber back then was it was trying to do too many things,” said Jain. “By the time I was recruited, the idea was to get back to the roots of how do we make an internet service provider an effective entity. How do we hybridize experience in the industry with innovative thinking of the tech industry to create something that is meaningfully different.”

Lumos Fiber DISCUSSES CLOSING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE

By Doug Mohney

Privately held Lumos Fiber isn’t out to conquer the whole world, but is simply building all-fiber networks to connect families, communities, and small businesses in unserved and underserved areas of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. Using private capital to the tune of $700 million so far, the company provides service to 200,000 locations with 6,000 route miles at the end of June 2023.

“I love what Lumos is doing right now by using our own resources to bring fiber to small towns and cities like Haw River, North Carolina, or Cowpens, South Carolina, but then also midsize cities like Chesapeake, Virginia, and Wilmington, North Carolina,” said Derek Kelly, Vice President of Business Development, Lumos Fiber. “All the federal and state funding programs should continue to have a fiber first slant to them. Thinking about what happens five and 10 years down the road as all the federal funding has been deployed, we’re going to start seeing a time where the better infrastructure tends to be in our unincorporated areas. What’s that going to do for our smaller towns and cities? As people look to move, they’re going to go to where the better infrastructure is.”

Being able to work with community leaders is important as Lumos continues to expand. “One of our key tenants moving into a new market is we want to have a great relationship with our city, town, and county officials,” said Kelly. “We’re specifically targeting areas that don’t have fiber, whether that’s a small town that has no fiber coverage or if it’s a medium-sized town that has fiber in the new neighborhoods, but the older parts of town don’t have fiber. For example, we formed a partnership last year with Orange County, North Carolina. We’re going to build fiber to about 6,300 completely unserved homes, but as part of that partnership, we’re also going to invest heavily in what we consider to be underserved areas, which is any area that doesn’t have fiber. So, we’re also building fiber to more than 22,000 more homes that lack a fiber connection today.”

Kelly believes that the $3.5 billion in BEAD funding being delivered to North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia should be enough to get “pretty close” or all the way to universal coverage, but there will be some challenges to be worked out, especially around extremely high-cost locations. “One thing I think we’re going to see evolve

around how states handle long drops,” Kelly said. “As coverage progresses, I think we’re going to find a time where we remove some of those limitations or change them some. Think about the house that is a mile off the road. Maybe it’s a house they inherited. Just because your driveway is a mile long doesn’t mean you’re wealthy. The hurdle of spending $10,000 or $20,000 to get a drop to that house is something a lot of families are never going to be able to overcome. Making sure there is some type of resource to help those families is going to be important as we get from maybe 99.5% to 100% with fiber.”

Fiber connectivity for unserved and underserved areas is the first step in closing the digital divide, but Kelly and Lumos recognize it’s more than just the availability of high-speed broadband that’s needed and there will need to be some fine tuning and reinforcement of existing programs along with support from non-profit organization to continue to close the chasm.

“Earlier this year, we announced a $30 plan for our 100 meg symmetrical option,” Kelly said. “When you pair that with the [Federal Communications Commission] Affordable Connectivity Plan, we basically have a free service for those qualifying families. We’re seeing an uptake in people tapping into the plan, especially as the FCC has rolled out a bunch of ACP awareness campaigns.”

However, Kelly noted that ACP has drifted into being a cell phone subsidy plan rather than being used for connectivity and may run out of funds in the first half of 2024 if Congress doesn’t act to continue the program.

“If the light switch were to just turn off, that’s going to impact a lot of families that are not going to have an option to continue service,” Kelly said. “Hopefully Congress will find a good way to act, to truly accomplish the mission of making sure families have internet at home. I think most of us have seen, especially through the pandemic, that cell phones are a good consumption device but not a good creation device. It truly takes a home internet connection with a physical device like a laptop or Chromebook to get that creation utility, whether it’s for schoolwork or work from home.”

Getting devices to those who need them isn’t Lumos’ responsibility, so it works with other organizations to fill the

gap. Kelly is the Board Vice-Chair of the Kramden Institute, a Durham, North Carolina, educational non-profit providing technology tools and training to bridge the digital divide. For 20 years, Kramden has been refurbishing computer hardware and providing it to those who need it, later adding educational classes for members of the community who lack basic computer skills.

The economic and business benefits being delivered by Lumos Fiber deployments are readily seen by the communities they serve. “We work very closely with Botetourt County in Virginia,” said Kelly. “We hear from their local leaders that they have residents working for NASA and Microsoft from home. I also heard from a business owner named Candace, who runs two small businesses from her home. She talks about how fiber has truly changed her quality of business and quality of life; things that use to take two hours are now taking her two minutes with fiber. Now she’s able to spend time with her family and not sitting around a computer waiting for something to upload or download.”

Most importantly for the communities it serves, Lumos sees work deploying all-fiber networks as a long-term investment for themselves and the communities they work with. “Lumos is in a unique category right now,” Kelly said. “There are a bunch of companies that are truly focused on just building fiber in cities. There are a lot of companies where their expansion business model right now is going after grants and chasing the grants are basically consuming their expansion efforts. We fit somewhere in both buckets where we’re investing heavily in what we call underserved areas, areas without fiber, but then we also are interested in using grants, whether it’s through BEAD or through partnerships with county or state programs to deploy into truly unserved areas.

“We are focused on both at the same time, and that’s one of the things I think plays well when we talk to local leaders. We want to come invest and set your small towns and cities up for the next 50 or 100 years with infrastructure. At the same time, as funding sources become available, we want to partner with local and state government to get to those hardest to reach areas of the county.”

Lumos Fiber Vice President of Business Development Derek Kelly says the company believes in great partnerships with local communities to deliver fiber. Source: Lumos Fiber.

People of the Middle Water Connect

The Osage Nation, located in Northeast Oklahoma, call themselves “Wahzhazhe,” which roughly translates to “people of the middle water.” Using a combination of funds, including $40.6 million from the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program and $13.9 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture ReConnect Grant Program, the nation has created Wahzhazhe Connect, a project to build out more than 200 miles of fiber and erect 16 towers throughout the Nation’s service area over the next two years.

“With what we’re doing here, we set the Osage Nation and the Osage County up to become a significant force for economic development. Osage Nation Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear has spoken many times about the economic importance of broadband,” said Dr. James Trumbly, Director, Wahzhazhe Connect – Osage Nation

Broadband. “When this country was started, the economic centers were based upon the coast, which was where they could get ships in. Then they started basing them on waterways where they could get ships up the rivers. And then they based them where the railroads were because it was what moved goods and connected people. The same thing happened with the construction of the interstate highway network because of the ability to connect towns. Broadband is the next way of connecting people.”

Larger, in area, than the state of Delaware at 2,304 square miles and with 45,000 residents, Wahzhazhe Connect will deploy fiber across a combination of flat and hilly lands, with some areas very challenging to deploy underground due to the rocky, granite subsurface. “People thought this land was kind of useless when they let us buy it back in the day until they discovered oil under it,” said Trumbly. “There

L-R: Mike Sanders, Executive Director of the Oklahoma Broadband Office, Jim Trumbly, and James Lightfoot, President of ACRS, the engineering firm for the project. Source: Wahzhazhe Connect, Osage Nation.

are lot of challenges with buried fiber. With Boring and rock saws and trenches it could cost up to $120,000 a mile. We’re hoping it comes in significantly lower than that.”

Burying fiber is preferable to aerial deployment for several reasons, including concerns about the occasional tornado or, more significantly, winter ice storms that blanket the region and “tear up” above ground infrastructure.

Wahzhazhe Connect is “very fortunate,” said Trumbly, because it will be able to build its fiber and fiber-serviced towers using federal grant monies. “We don’t have the large capital outlay that we have to service and pay for that debt,” he said. “Our business models are such that we have to ensure the subscription rate and the number of subscribers is sufficient to cover the maintenance and ongoing operations, but we won’t have to pay for capital investments.”

Middle-mile construction will follow the major highways in Osage County. “We’re running from Bartlesville to

Ponca City and then from Pawhuska down through Hominy and Skiatook to cut down into Tulsa,” said Trumbly. “We’re hitting the major traffic arteries and by doing that, the majority of the households are fairly close to those roads. We’re able to extend fiber to the home for those native households, which are funded in the [Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program] program for NTIA. We’re also hoping to get funding through state BEAD to connect non-native households. We’re able to branch off and pick up the ones closest to the main highway, within 300, 400, or 500 feet of the main trunk line. Households that would be cost prohibitive, like a mile down some county road, we’ll be able to service through one of our 16 towers through wireless. We can provide fiber to the tower and then used fixed wireless at some lesser speeds; we’re shooting for symmetrical 100 megabits down, 100 megabits up.”

Wahzhazhe Connect and the Osage Nation are looking at several unique concepts to promote digital equity. “We’re looking at a program where we pare our youth

Danny Mackey (right), Wahzhazhe Connect Broadband Field Technician Trainee, assists Miguel Torres, Gulf Shores Construction, with loading boring equipment used to bury fiber optic cable to homes in Fairfax Senior Housing. Source: Wahzhazhe Connect, Osage Nation.

with our elders at an Osage school as a cross-educational experience,” Trumbly said. “We can have the youth help the seniors learn email, stream videos, communicate via FaceTime and all that. At the same time, the elders can pass on the Osage culture and traditions to the youth. Another is a concept like a bookmobile, but a techmobile. We could get a bus fitted with some workstations and other technology that we can take all over the county. We can set it up and train on how to use Microsoft Office, how to do Windows and Macs.”

Connectivity will be provided to community centers in the three Osage Nation districts with other outreach education taking place for telemedicine and distance education, working with the local schools and libraries in the area as well. Fiber Infrastructure has and is being put into place at local health clinics, with the newest clinic requiring two 5 Gbps circuits, one for primary use and the other diversely routed for resilience.

Building and operating Wahzhazhe Connect has directly created seven full-time jobs, with some responsibilities weighing on the administrative bookkeeper, procurement coordinator, and the warehouse administrator keeping track of what goes where and what funds and equipment are tasked to what construction.

“Part of our challenge is our projects have to be very segregated since we have funding for NTIA projects, funding for our USDA projects, and funding for ARPA projects,” said Trumbly. “The ARPA projects we’re very active with, we’ve installed fiber to the home for Pawhuska senior housing. We’re about two weeks away from finishing up the Fairfax senior housing. Next week, we break ground on the construction of the new senior housing for Hominy and we’ll be putting fiber to the home there.”

Construction using NTIA and USDA funding is going through environmental and historical preservation clearance, but Wahzhazhe Connect can’t spend dollars or use materials purchased for one project on another one. “We’re managing lead time, still identifying and ordering components for those different projects. When those components come in, we have to keep them segregated, based on funding source. We can’t use splice cabinets that we bought with NTIA money on our USDA project. Our warehouse manager is on point for doing that. He’s doing a great job.”

Like many smaller providers, Wahzhazhe Connect has had to struggle with supply chain challenges as everyone gears up for ARPA and BEAD spending. “Everybody’s scrambling to get the same spools of fiber, the same conduits, the same splice tray, the same PON cabinets, all that stuff,” said Trumbly. “One of the first things we did was hire a procurement specialist who would work on other

things, but was dedicated to us and works on our tasks as first priority.

“What we do is we buy all the materials directly. We don’t pay sales tax so that’s eight and a half percent savings right off the top and then we have it shipped and stored here and then we have to manage it for each project. When our subcontractors come in and say, ‘I need three spools of fiber,’ we ask what project they’re working on, get it from the appropriate warehouse project section, check it out to them. They use it, bring back any leftover surplus and we check it back in and keep track of it that way. That’s been a huge challenge, managing the lead times for all the materials and making sure the right materials are used for the right project.”

But job creation started at Wahzhazhe Connect, not ended. To train more fiber technicians, Wahzhazhe Connect partnered with vocational tech firm Tri-County Tech to deliver a fiber optics training course, assisting in them getting grant money to get started. It also worked with Osage Nation Workforce Development to identify prospective students for the program.

“We put them in through the training program and the classroom training program,” said Trumbly. “And we put into our fiber-to-the-home subcontractors RFPs that they had to assist the Osage Nation with an apprenticeship program. They signed on for that, so when the students finish the classroom work, they move over and start working with the contractor learning the on-the-job component. A couple of people have been hired by the private sector already and we have high hopes for that in the future going forward.”

Additional jobs will be created as Wahzhazhe Connect builds and staffs a central office and other facilities, but there may be some unique repurposing of existing facilities in the years ahead. “The Osage Nation is currently building two new casinos. The new Bartlesville casino is replacing an old casino about four and a half miles away. We are exploring the possibility of taking that old casino and converting it into a data center because it’s already got raised floors, backup generators, and other features.

“If we do that, one of the things I want to make sure we offer to Osage tribal citizens are various services for businesses. Maybe we provide an IT footprint for a couple years to help new businesses get started, like an incubator program. Plus, we want to do some other things that would allow us to allow people to work remotely. COVID taught us all that people can work remotely. There are some things we could do as far as stimulating people so they can have a job based in Tulsa but work here and live here or have a job located in another city, but work and live here.”

Hardy CelebratesTelecommunications a Decade of Fiber

Located in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, nonprofit telephone cooperative Hardy Telecommunications is celebrating its 10th year of delivering fiber services to the communities in the area, part of a history dating back to its founding in 1953. Its area includes the rural residents and businesses of Hardy County and portions of neighboring Grant, Pendleton, and Hampshire counties that were not served at the time.

“In 2010, we applied for and received both BTOP and BIP project funds under President Obama’s [economic] stimulus programs,” said Derek Barr, Assistant General Manager at Hardy Telecommunications, Inc. “We received a Broadband Technologies Opportunities Program (BTOP) award to build out facilities, so we built an anchor ring from that. We also received our largest grant, a $32.7 million project, to build fiber for the homes in our area. About $9.49 million of that is a loan, which for us is huge, because we’re a pretty small non-profit coop in West Virginia. But we saw back then that fiber was where things were headed.”

The initial project was completed in 2015 with additional expansions occurring as funding has become available over the years, with the most recent expansions taking place using ARPA monies to reach the farthest areas of Hardy County and further into Grant County. As of March 2023, Hardy provides services to 4,341 customers via 1,648 miles of deployed fiber with more route miles added every month.

“We continue to build fiber, and we’re installing 40 to 50 locations a month,” said Barr. “Most of those are in neighboring areas from Hardy County. We opened a new section in Hampshire County through a [USDA] Community Connect Grant Program and we’re adding a lot of people there.”

Hardy’s network currently uses DZS for network and ONT gear, Clearfield for optical connections, and several different types of routers for in-home connectivity. “Most of our [residential customer] routers are either Plume or related to Plume with the OpenSync program,” Barr said. “We use Plume’s programs for FCC speed testing, plus they have a customer-facing app that lets the residential user have more control over their own network and Wi-Fi.”

Having fiber in place has provided significant benefits to the local community, connecting schools, hospitals, public safety institutions, and local senior citizens centers. It has also enabled interactions that weren’t possible before. “There seems to be a focus only on the negatives of social media,” Barr stated. “One thing we’ve seen here is that students can connect with people, connect with peers that they probably wouldn’t have otherwise. I remember in the old days jumping on a telephone at night, but that’s not how younger people communicate.”

Available access to fiber has also brought people and businesses into the region. Due to its 2.5-hour proximity to Washington D.C., seasonal and weekend homes became permanent households during COVID with a blossoming Airbnb community. “People are coming for the scenery, but they have to have broadband internet,” Barr stated.

Barr credits fiber with assisting American Woodmark Corporation in operating a cabinet manufacturing facility in Moorefield and enabling European-based packaging firm Papier-Mettler to put its plastic recycling facility in the county along with a real estate boom in the eastern side of the county. “Papier-Mettler had some tremendous fiber requirements,” Barr said. “They wanted a rural setting and they couldn’t find many sites on the East Coast that met their rural requirements, and their internet facility needs. We were able to do that for them.”

Hardy Telecommunications has deployed over 1,600 miles of fiber to date in West Virginia. Source: Hardy Telecommunications.

When it comes to laying fiber cable, a clean trench means speed, efficiency and a better bottom line.

The Guzzler MT is the ideal productivity solution. This highly efficient Microtrenching Vacuum Unit increases the speed of fiber optic installations by quickly cleaning trenches for the deployment of FTTH, CCTV, smart grid and electric networks.

BOTTOM LINE: With faster operating speeds and cleaner trenches, installers can lay more feet per day. Visit GUZZLER.COM

Clean. Fast. Connected.

Northern Nevada’s Broadband Challenges Get Fiber

By Doug Mohney

When most people think about Nevada, the bright lights of Las Vegas come to mind. However, the state’s mountains and tracts of uninhabited lands are obstacles in deploying broadband to the northern areas of the state, especially around Reno and Lake Tahoe. Founded twenty years ago, Sky Fiber Internet started as a fixed wireless provider leveraging fiber services to deploy and connect customers and now will be building its very own fiber network to connect state facilities and provide a middle mile network for its expansion.

“We have a little under 5,000 fiber and fixed-based wireless customers,” said Garry Gomes, Founder and CEO of Sky Fiber Internet. “Today, we buy Layer 2 or wavelength [services on fiber] from data center to data center, data center to mountain tops, tops of casinos, and to around 240 to 250 different repeater locations throughout Nevada. If it’s not fiber fed, it’s fiber fed to long-haul microwave.”

Sky Fiber has data center facilities at Switch’s facility at the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center east of Reno, a booming technology and industrial area that includes Apple and Google data centers, Tesla’s first Gigafactory, and numerous retail distribution centers requiring large warehouses and high-speed, low latency broadband.

“I’ve been here 27 years,” Gomes said. “The industrial commercial side has really hit a growth spurt. Reno isn’t the great deal in real estate it used to be.”

Gomes started Sky Fiber as a side gig to his primary job as an electrical contractor. “We had customers who had houses in areas that didn’t have any internet and they kept asking the electrical contractor for connectivity,” he said. In addition, school districts, hospitals and health care facilities, libraries, Tribal lands, ranches, power plants, and mines in the region wanted internet access for their operations.

Fixed wireless technology provided a quick and easy way to connect customers, with fiber providing connectivity to tower sites for wireless radios, with some radio links reaching between the base and peak of a mountain, then extending coverage from peak to peak with other wireless relays. “At present, our most remarkable point-to-point link extends a full 52 miles to serve a significant mining operation near Battle Mountain, delivering a robust 1 gigabit connection,” said Gomes.

Two major improvements to Sky Fiber’s network will ensure it will have plenty of room to grow in the future. The company is leveraging its existing fiber network to plug in Tarana Wireless equipment, enabling the company to deliver higher speed services to 25 towns in Northern Nevada. A base station on top of Genoa Peak above Lake Tahoe can reach customers up to 15 miles across the lake at speeds up to 500 Mbps in areas that aren’t economically accessible via fiber.

Sky Fiber Internet is also negotiating final details with the state of Nevada for the construction of a $25 million to $35 million middle mile fiber project that will provide benefits for both the public and private sectors. “It will be state facilities and, in some areas, counties will jump on,” Gomes said. “The counties can save money by jumping onto that trunk as opposed to building a separate line all the way back to where they need to connect. We’re adding our own fibers to the build to start our own network.”

Having its own middle-mile network positions Sky Fiber Internet to tap into other sources of funding that will soon be available. “BEAD is going to provide fiber to the home to as many places as possible,” Gomes said. “Getting fiber to more communities is going to help and we’re going to do all we can since we know fiber is the best way to go for sure.”

Fiber plays an essential role in linking Sky Fiber’s network of mountaintop towers to the rest of the world. Source: Sky Fiber Internet.

• OSP/ISP Fiber design, engineering, & permitting

• Field survey

• OSP/ISP Fiber placement, splicing, & testing

• Construction & construction management

• Inspection & verification

• Program management

• High-count fiber cable installation & splicing

Grab your spot now in the upcoming Fiber Forward issues!

‘23-’24 Editorial Calendar

November 2023

Materials due October 17, 2023

• Middle Mile Innovations

• Fiber Connect 2023 Highlights

• State of the Association

• Executive Insights | Federal/State Update

Community Profiles | Innovation at Work

March 2024

Materials due January 16, 2024

• Utilities Super Charging Fiber

• FBA in 2023 - The Year in Review

• Consumer Technology & Broadband

• Urban Digital Divide

• Executive Insights | Federal/State Update

Community Profiles | Innovation at Workation at Work

June 2024

Materials due April 22, 2024

• Sustainability

• Permitting Progress

• Enterprise Fiber

• Executive Insights | Federal/State Update

Community Profiles | Innovation at Work

Contact

Securing Networks, Speeding Websites –Cloudflare

Like Akamai, Cloudflare operates a CDN global network to enhance network performance. Still, it is best known for its security solutions, leveraging its profuse connectivity to secure, optimize, and accelerate websites and applications, deliver SD-WAN services for businesses, and provide DDoS mitigation, among other features.

“Cloudflare protects about 20% of the websites on the Internet these days,” said Mike Conlow, Cloudflare’s Director of Network Strategy. “We have a presence in 300 cities globally in over 100 countries. We interconnect with 12,000 other networks on the internet and have a presence at 290 Internet Exchanges worldwide.”

if they have the necessary permissions to access them, as well as verifying what specific resources the user is allowed to access, providing a very granular approach to security instead of an all-or-nothing VPN connection.

HOW DO INTERNET EXCHANGES WORK?

IX’s have been a critical part of the internet ecosystem since the dawn of the web, yet their access is difficult and costly for small service providers

Source:

All Cloudflare’s locations and IX connections enable its various security and CDN offerings to operate at a massive scale to provide it with the data and capabilities for its industry-leading DDoS mitigation services, as evaluated by both Forrester and Gartner. According to the company’s website, the Cloudflare network blocks 112 billion daily threats on average.

Because of its’ distributed network and massive number of IX connections, Cloudflare can offer a software and network SD-WAN solution for businesses to connect multiple office locations and work-from-home employees as a turn-key service while avoiding the complexities of other options.

“The usual remote access security architecture is a VPN solution that allows remote employees to get access to the corporate network,” said Conlow. “If you need to connect multiple offices together, you might consider an expensive MPLS solution, but if the bad guys get in through the VPN, it’s all over. What has changed, and it mostly coincided with COVID, is we no longer need to have that kind of castle and moat VPN architecture.”

Cloudflare connects remote offices and individual locations through its cloud architecture, leveraging those 12,000 network connections, and then runs the security on top of it with a zero-trust architecture that takes nothing for granted. Each connection is verified by user, what corporate site or sites they are allowed to access and

“We can do that on any kind of resource,” Conlow said. “By resource, database, and website basis. All your remote resources are connected using the underlying Internet access that the company is already paying for. We’ve created an SDWAN – in software, that’s the ‘S’ in ‘SD’ – with no additional costs for VPN or MPLS. Additionally, we need to add in a Zero-Trust layer because we don’t want every user on that SD-WAN network to be able to see everything else on that network, or we have the same kind of castle and moat problem – once bad guys get past the moat into the castle, they have access to everything.”

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection is one service Cloudflare is well known for. “If you think about an IP address as a place on the Internet, a single IP address on a single server can be very easily overwhelmed by a DDoS attack,” said Conlow. “What we can do with our 300 data centers is take an IP address and advertise it from all our sites globally. The attacker trying to overwhelm that IP address ends up with their attack distributed across the cloud, so we already have a better ability to withstand the attack. Then we use our software to drop anything we think is attack traffic. Once we can do that, we can transit the clean, legitimate traffic to the real server on the internet. We call this Magic Transit. The attacker can’t get access to that server’s actual IP address, protecting it from being overloaded.”

Ultimately, Cloudflare wants to expand its set of connections to include as many ISPs as possible in the United States, which will help enhance its DDoS service as well as give ISPs access to its free CDN distribution network. “We have a presence in 31 U.S. states now,” Conlow said. “We’d like to get to all 50 states, so if there’s an ISP in a state where we don’t currently have a presence, we can be flexible in on the amount of traffic. If there isn’t enough traffic to justify the connection on either side, we could talk about Internet Exchange or direct peering instead of embedded caches. There are different options, so they can pick kind of any kind of traffic volume between us.”

Providing eyeball networks the ability to connect their networks directly to content provider networks, bypassing traditional IP transit providers

Offering settlement-free direct exchange of traffic (not charging based on volume of traffic) between providers

“The thing that’s absolutely needed is the underlying technology components to enable this and other new applications,” Sumitra said. “The gateway itself becomes an essential part of it. You need a powerful enough gateway and a mesh network that can cover and support any device, any user across the board. You need the cloud management piece to be able to deliver that service. The third piece is a services delivery portal. But how do you bring in these services and not just bring in custom code every time? You want a platform where you’re able to develop and deliver some services on your own as you’re gathering insights from subscribers as well be able to bring in third-party applications because you don’t want to write everything yourself.”

Calix is a bit more skeptical of Wi-Fi sensing, having seen a lot of demonstrations of the capability for a while. “To me, it is a technology that has been seeking an application for about 10 years,” said Weening. “It’s cool and fun to play with, but there are too many false positive and false negative results, and so people just turn it off after the demo. Service providers are asking us for monetizable services that they can trust and put their brand behind. We just haven’t seen the desire from our customers or the right application for Wi-Fibased motion sensing. If that time comes, it will be easy for us to integrate that technology, but it is not there yet.”

The Steady Grind of Future Smart Home Services

Parks Associates believes there will be growth in serval types of applications over the next five years, but it’s not necessarily going to be as simple as consumers or service providers would like, given all the various interests driving development and adoption.

“It’s unlikely there will be one app to rule them all and the screen usage varies,” said Parks. “The TV will show up still as the biggest screen interface at home. If you watch what Roku is doing, we see the home security and entertainment spaces coming together with the TV. The same is happening in telehealth and the TV - the Independa Health Hub is a good example of future services leveraging the TV as a key interface.”

While smart home device manufacturers made a lot of noise at CES 2023 about interoperability through the Matter standard, the reality of seamless plug-and-play use is going to take time.

“We’ve been talking about interoperability for decades,” said Parks. “Matter has made some advancements with their numbers, the manufacturers getting involved, but it’s also slow going. It’s not really a big surprise for anybody who’s been around, given the numbers of players and the engineering that has to happen in the background. I don’t think there’s been a big, huge impact so far and we will keep watching for bigger impacts to move the smart home market to mass market adoption.”

Parks Assocaites’ smart home device adoption research shows the sector moving into the early majority stage, with some slowdowns because of different market factors. “We’re making progress but it’s slow and steady and it probably always will be for the smart home,” said Parks “Nothing really happens fast. Even without Matter, there’s still going to be companies that produce very, very good systems that have lots of applications and are very advanced, especially in the high-end luxury area. Growth will continue, though. Consumers love technology and they keep buying tech in the home and relying on it.”

Name brand home security systems like ADT will continue to work with large tech firms like Google, combining them with insurance partnerships now that there are enough devices in the market to demonstrate to the actuaries that use of such systems reduces insurance claims.

Utility monitoring for energy management and safety is an area that Parks expected to see new growth. Firms such as Whisker Labs are combining sensors and software to provide early warning of electrical wiring problems and power surges that can lead to property damage or full-blown fires. Companies such as Schneider Electric are providing wholehome energy management systems to integrate storage, roof-mounted, solar, and in-house consumption while the Span intelligent electric panel provides integrated monitoring built into the home’s circuit breaker panel.

“You’ll see a transformation in homes as they get built with these systems,” Parks said. “All these systems large and small, solar, EVs, energy efficient blinds and lighting and appliances, all of that will end up getting tied together. The utilities are very much in support of all of it because they’re going to need to produce, buy, and store the energy and put it back to the grid in the years to come. A lot of these forward-thinking, very large utilities are working on building neighborhoods that will be connected and that brings in the term “virtual power plant,” which is collecting and using the energy from groups of homes. The future is bi-directional energy. It might take a while, but consumers are selling energy back to the utility, so it’s not going to be a one-way street anymore.”

Social media monitoring of all devices is a feature parents are requesting. Source: Calix.

Enabling the Lifestyle that Better Broadband Provides

The game-changing SeeChange® Access Terminal and precisely designed hardened connectors speed the final connection through:

• Off-the-shelf availability

• Minimizing inventory management

• Cutting your design time

• Simplifying your installations

Clearfield® innovations make designing and installing plug-and-play fiber networks faster and easier than ever before. We can help you achieve your fiber connection goals. Ask Clearfield to show you how.

Learn how to simplify your deployments at www.SeeClearfield.com or call 800-422-2537