Marquette-Adams chooses Occam for stimulus-funded FTTP deployment

Marquette-Adams Telephone Co., a rural carrier in central Wisconsin, announced today it will deploy a multi-service access platform from Occam Networks to support a fiber-to-the-premises project funded in part through the broadband stimulus program. The carrier won $20 million as a combination grant/loan from the Rural Utilities Service in the second funding round.

The deployment will bring broadband service to 4600 homes that previously did not have broadband available to them. “Not one customer do we anticipate coming from an area where they could already get high-speed service,” said Jerry Schneider, general manager for Marquette-Adams.

Marquette-Adams plans to use the new network to support IPTV as well as high-speed data service. On the data side, Schneider said, “We plan to have two main offerings: 5 Mb/s down and 1 Mb/s up or 20 Mb/s down and 5 Mb/s up.”

The Occam platform can support either gigabit passive optical network (GPON) or active Ethernet service through a change of blades within the chassis. Marquette-Adams plans to deploy the network using a traditional GPON architecture that uses a splitter in a neighborhood location, but Schneider envisions using active Ethernet to support customers with especially high bandwidth requirements.

“Our vision is that GPON will take care of 99-plus percentage of customers,” Schneider said. If a customer needs active Ethernet, the carrier will add the active electronics required for that service, he added.

Marquette-Adams opted to use GPON rather than active Ethernet in part because that choice would save on power costs. The carrier anticipates that about 3000 customers will take broadband service and, based on that, expects to save $50,000 a year in operational costs compared with an active Ethernet solution.

Like many broadband stimulus winners, Marquette-Adams is continuing to use a supplier with which it already has experience. The carrier previously used Occam equipment to support a broadband service deployment to approximately half of its customer base.

Something else Marquette-Adams has in common with many stimulus award winners: It previously borrowed money through the RUS loan program.