One Vermont telco is using copper and fiber options to improve services for its eclectic customer base

Think “rural,” and Fortune 50 corporations, ski resorts, and world-class universities and medical centers usually don't come to mind. But that's part of the customer mix served by Waitsfield and Champlain Valley Telecom, based in Waitsfield, Vt.

To meet the needs of that base — slightly more than 16,000 customers spread out over 679 square miles — the service provider has upgraded its network with the help of vendor Pannaway Networks. WCVT's network has an all-IP/Ethernet core, offers improved broadband access at dozens of remote nodes, and hits green- and brownfield opportunities with fiber-to-the-home (FTTH).

Its service territory “is rural in nature, but many of our customers are white collar,” said Bill Fogg, network planner for WCVT. Nearby businesses include large GE Healthcare and IBM campuses. Many universities, including the University of Vermont, also are in the area.

WCVT started its migration to all-IP with Pannaway in 2005. The primary reason: to migrate customers on its existing G.Lite ADSL platform to ADSL2+ speeds. Current G.Lite sites aggregate to ATM switches via the telco's Sonet network. The newer Pannaway network includes seven different Gigabit Ethernet rings handled by Pannaway's Broadband Access Manager (BAM) platform. WCVT chose a Layer 3, routed-IP network infrastructure to make upgrades and changes easier and less disruptive, Fogg said.

While it mostly is using that upgrade to serve existing customers with higher-speed DSL, the upgrade also “set the foundation, which allows us to easily deploy fiber — from a central office standpoint — out to people's homes,” Fogg said. “Getting the actual fiber out to homes is another topic, but we needed that core network to migrate from copper to fiber.”

With the IP/Ethernet core in place, WCVT has been able to bring its first FTTH deployment to a new development near the Sugarbush ski resort, with an additional 20 FTTH deployments slated for this year as the upscale homes are built. The telco plans to serve about another 200 homes with fiber in two locations, where it will replace existing copper plant. In those locations, using home-run fiber is cheaper than augmenting existing copper networks for higher-speed DSL, Fogg said. WCVT also is running active Ethernet fiber out to two local high schools.

The fiber network is active Ethernet at the moment, but WCVT will be switching to a Gigabit passive optical network (GPON) — targeting the residential deployments — later this year after Pannaway releases new 2.5 GPON blades for its MAGNM-20 access platform. WCVT recently ordered seven new MAGNM-20 chassis for its network. Initially some of those boxes will be for copper and some for fiber, but ultimately WCVT may mix and match blades as well. Pannaway announced new GPON blade access and a new 10 Gigabit Ethernet transport fabric for that platform in February.

The ability to serve Ethernet and GPON from a single platform is very helpful for smaller carriers serving more rural areas, said Mike Skubisz, chief technology officer for Pannaway.

“By putting active Ethernet and GPON on the same platform, you have a situation, such as in a residential area, where you have areas close to the central office where you can feed that with PON,” Skubisz said. “At the same time, you may also have some properties really far out there where active becomes a lot more attractive.”

Meanwhile, WCVT has upgraded 22 of its 63 remote terminals to Pannaway's BAS Broadband Access Switch, which supports 48 ports of voice and 48 ports of data. That combination not only boosts subscriber broadband data speeds, but allows WCVT to turn up DSL much more quickly and without truck rolls, Fogg said.

For WCVT, the network upgrade is all about serving its customers — 10,000 of whom are already using DSL — with even higher broadband speeds, Fogg said. But IPTV isn't in the equation. Today, WCVT delivers cable TV service to about 3500 customers in part of its service area via a 450 MHz quadrature amplitude modulation radio-frequency system and analog headend. The telco is more interested in upgrading that network to digital — mainly to support demand for more high-definition TV channels — than in moving to a switched IPTV platform, Fogg said.

For Fogg, deploying long fiber runs takes him back to the future. “I've been doing planning a long time,” he said. “When we put our 63 remotes in, I was responsible for every one of them, carving our network up into shorter loops to get customers the [higher-speed] services they wanted. Now with fiber, most of the remotes will [one day] be gone. But what you find is when you patch things back together, they don't necessarily go back in the same way. It makes life interesting.”