BROADBAND COMMUNITIES is the leading source of information on digital and broadband technologies for buildings and communities. Our editorial aims to accelerate the deployment of Fiber-To-The-Home and Fiber-To-The-Premises.
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FTTH Case sTudy Cass Cable Serves Rural Communities With RFoG CommScope helped Cass Cable build low maintenance, high-reliability FTTH plant in several rural Illinois systems. By Elisa Mackie / CommScope A bandoned and neglected cable systems proved to be an opportunity for Cass Cable TV Inc., a forward-looking operator in west-central Illinois with deep roots in the region. Using the BrightPath Optical Solutions (BOS) portfolio from CommScope Inc., Cass constructed two new systems and rebuilt another. By so doing, the company created highly reliable infrastructures requiring low maintenance, reduced operating expenditures and began to deliver advanced services to underserved markets. ThE BACk STORy Cass Cable TV serves 17,000 customers in 13 counties, including Cass County. It began as Cass Telephone Company in 1898 and expanded through acquisitions. It continues to serve the region with telephony and Internet services. In 1965, Gerald Gill, the founder's great-grandson, built his frst cable television system. Since then, Cass has expanded its reach and services, ofering basic and digital cable, high-speed Internet, video on demand, highdefnition television and digital phone. In 2009, Cass began looking into select deployments of fber to the home in locations within its service area. In discussions with CommScope, Cass's longstanding provider of fber and cable products, chief operating ofcer Tom Allen and chief technology ofcer Lance Allen considered BOS. As an end-to-end system approach to FTTx architectures, BOS ofered 18 | BROADBAND COMMUNITIES | www.broadbandcommunities.com Cass an efcient way to deliver its services to communities that other operators had neglected. BOS has a full suite of headend, outsideplant and end-user solutions, so an operator such as Cass can choose the right technology and architecture to meet the unique needs of residential, multifamily, commercial and cellular backhaul applications. BOS supports radio frequency over glass (RFoG) technology and provides a choice of physical architectures, such as tapped, distributed or centralized splits. Complementing CommScope's fber optic cables, splitters, taps and enclosures is a broad set of multiwavelength transmitters, erbium-doped fber amplifers, low-noise return path receivers and RFoG optical network units, enabling operators to migrate to deep fber infrastructures. SEIzING OppORTUNITIES Te frst market that Cass addressed was Griggsville, Ill., a town of about 1,200 people. It is located 70 miles west of Springfeld, Ill., and 40 miles east of Hannibal, Mo. Once operated by Rapid Communications, the Griggsville cable system had been taken over by Almega Cable and then abandoned. At the time, Griggsville had some 900 MHz wireless coverage, and that was it. Cass later added two additional markets: the larger town of Brighton, Ill., and the unserved village of Manchester, Ill. According to Tom Allen, Brighton had some very slow cable Internet, and some areas had poor DSL. Manchester had at least one wireless | July 2013