Page 42 - GCN, March and April 2017

case study BROADBAND
Ohio town preps gigabit
broadband network
The wireless fiber-optic network will boost internet speeds by a factor of 20 for residents and businesses in Fairlawn, Ohio
BY STEPHANIE KANOWITZ
When Ernie Staten, deputy director of public service for Fairlawn, Ohio, had trouble getting online to do his work, he knew the city had a problem.
Around the same time, Mayor Wil- liam Roth was traveling to trade shows in China and Germany looking for ways to bring economic development to the city of 7,500. Staten and Roth arrived at the same conclusion: They needed better internet connectivity.
Today, the city is about a third of the way through building FairlawnGig, a wireless fiber-optic network by Fujitsu Network Communications that will give local residents and businesses in- ternet speeds of 1 gigabit/sec — more than 20 times faster than anything they previously had access to.
“The broadband that we had is prob- ably pretty typical for the state of Ohio,” Staten said. “Ohio is ranked 50th now in the country, and Fairlawn was 86th in the state. We were beyond the bot- tom of the barrel here in the city.”
That will change this fall, when the network is expected to be complete. The original goal was to connect 35 percent of the city, Staten said, but 4,100 users are possible. One neigh- borhood of 160 homes is already con- nected, with 75 percent of households signing up for the service, and he add- ed that “we’re already making plans to go above the 35 percent in how we’re building it.”
Fujitsu installs an optical network terminal inside each subscribing home or office. The terminal also contains a wireless router, eliminating the need for a modem or other router.
The company designed the network as a Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) rather than an active Ether- net network. Mitch Drake, Fujitsu’s executive engagement leader, said the
company has the ability to put direct fiber and an active Ethernet technol- ogy throughout the Bath-Fairlawn- Akron Joint Economic Development District, a main target for better inter- net speeds and reliability.
Fujitsu turned to communications equipment supplier Calix for the GPON and Juniper Networks for the routing.
The network was put through its
A construction worker installs a smaller feeder fiber to connect an outlying neighborhood to a gigabit network that Fairlawn officials hope will boost economic development in the town.
42 GCN MARCH/APRIL 2017 • GCN.COM
FAIRLAWNGIG.NET