Broadband in a Box wins first CLEC

Broadband in a Box has its first CLEC customer.

In about six weeks, with no marketing, West Virginia’s FiberNet (not to be confused with the nationwide carrier recently acquired by Zayo) has signed up 65 subscribers for the Internet service that uses satellite for downstream traffic and dialup for upstream.

The service, designed for the 10 million to 15 million US homes outside the reach of terrestrial broadband, offers downstream speeds of 256 kb/s or 1.5 Mb/s and dialup upstream speeds of 20 kb/s to 50kb/s. FiberNet is bundling it with its residential telephony services, offering customers the option of installing the requisite satellite dish themselves or paying a $125 installation fee.

Because the system is based on a dialup uplink, Broadband in a Box is not eligible for federal broadband stimulus funding – it doesn’t meet the government’s definition of broadband.
The company named its first customer in June: Sytek Communications, a small rural Minnesota telco. And it claims to be talking with potential carrier partners about creating middle-mile broadband solutions.

FiberNet -- which is part of One Communciations, a nationwide CLEC with an 18-state footprint -- is also a small Internet service provider with 2,000 rural dialup customers. Its parent company, One, may have less interest in Broadband in a Box because it focuses exclusively on business customers.