22
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BROADBAND COMMUNITIES
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www.broadbandcommunities.com
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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014
FTTH DEPLOYMENT
Q&A; With Stephen Lane,
InteliPort
I
nteliPort is a North Carolina ISP that is
now building out fber to the home in
several communities, thanks to a middle-
mile network funded by the BTOP program.
Recently,
BroadBand Communities had
the opportunity to talk with Stephen Lane,
president of the company. Following are
highlights of that conversation.
BroadBand Communities: How did you decide to
deploy fber to the home?
Stephen Lane: We've been in business since
1997 and are one of the few local Internet
service providers still functioning in the
black. Customer service is very important
for us, and we've learned from our mistakes.
We frst looked at FTTH in the mid-2000s,
but we couldn't wrap our budgets around
it. However, we knew we had to start
doing something besides wireless. We're
using unlicensed wireless spectrum, and it
doesn't scale very well. In North Carolina,
it's difcult to penetrate many locations.
Tere's less and less spectrum and more and
more devices. It's a very crowded space. So
we looked at hybrid systems, we looked at
everything and then fnally we realized, "We
can do this."
BBC: What changed the economics of fber for you?
SL: Originally, we didn't have enough money
to build to a location where we could get
cheap enough backhaul. We started working
with MCNC early on but never could put
anything together till their BTOP project.
[MCNC builds and operates the North
Carolina Research and Education Network,
which was vastly expanded as a result of $144
million in grants from the BTOP program
and the Golden LEAF Rural Broadband
Initiative.] After that, we acquired 500 miles
of fber from them through indefeasible rights
of use. MCNC has been very supportive to
Stephen Lane runs a quality-control test on a Genexis ONT.
Backhaul from a BTOP-funded middle-mile network and the clever use of FTTH
technology make it possible to deliver ultra-high-speed broadband to small cities in
North Carolina.