July 11, 2008

PRTC Brings Fiber-to-the-Home Technology to Area Customers

Peoples Rural Telephone Cooperative announced today that the cable installation phase of their construction initiative of Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) in the Booneville area is complete, paving the way for television offerings and other future services. Crews are now splicing the fiber and installing the proper wiring to take it directly into homes. PRTC plans to begin offering fiber services to Booneville customers late this fall.

Making one of the most sizeable technological investments in Booneville history (over 1.5 million dollars), PRTC will be the premiere provider of fiber optics to the area. Fiber-to-the-Home will help the community to gain from the asset of optical fiber transport of voice, data and digital TV broadcast/transmission.

PRTC has established a technological model that even the largest networks in the country have yet to embrace. "This means that digital TV, voice and Internet will all interact through one fiber optic cable using the one simple link we will provide to customers. The fiber system will also enable us to monitor the total network constantly to insure that it works more efficiently," said Keith Gabbard, PRTC’s general manager.


PRTC plans to expand their fiber lines throughout their service area in the future. "We appreciate the community understanding the process it takes to install and build such an advanced network. We will keep customers updated on availability of new services as we implement them," said Gabbard.

April 11, 2008

PRTC'S FIBER-TO-THE-HOME CONSTRUCTION IN PREPARATION TO CONNECT HOMES IN BOONEVILLE TO NEXT-GENERATION BROADBAND

  A growing demand for high speed DSL service, video capabilities and the latest voice services drives Peoples Rural Telephone Cooperative to enable its customers to have access to the latest in technology. PRTC plans to deploy fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) throughout its coverage area. This significant investment in technology lays the foundation for an upgrade that will enable PRTC to rapidly activate video, data, and voice services over their new FTTH network.

  The city of Booneville will be the frontier for this deployment. Customers can expect to see contractors from Electricom working closely with PRTC engineers. There will be installation of new aerial and buried fiber optic cable. Questions or concerns regarding this can be directed to the Booneville PRTC office at 593-5000.

  Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) is the delivery of a communications signal over optical fiber from the operator’s switching equipment all the way to a home or business, thereby replacing existing copper infrastructure such as telephone wires and coaxial cable. Fiber-to-the-home is a relatively new and fast-growing method of providing higher bandwidth to customers. Connecting homes directly to fiber optic cable provides enormous improvements in the bandwidth that can be provided to customers. DSL modems rely on copper wire to deliver signals to your home – and copper can deliver high bandwidth only over short distances. Optical fiber does not have this limitation and thus is able to carry high bandwidth signals over great distances to homes and businesses. Only Fiber-to-the-home can deliver the immense bandwidth that the online and video applications of the future will require.

  With online options of feature length movies for download, online gaming, watching your favorite television programs and news online, as well as the option to upload your own movies to email and the internet for viewing by others, there is a higher demand for more bandwidth than ever before. PRTC wants to empower our customers with the fastest and most reliable network, Fiber-to-the-home will do this.