NEFCOM Communications Brings Fiber Broadband to Unserved and Underserved Rural Areas in Florida with Clearfield’s CraftSmart FiberFirst Pedestal

Townes Telecommunications, Inc. provides telecommunications services and internet access in communities in six states. One such community is Macclenny, FL – home of NEFCOM Communications (a subsidiary of Townes).

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Background

Challenge

When many people picture Florida, they visualize beautiful beaches, amusement parks and big cities. But between these popular attractions are wide spaces of rural area that need fiber broadband services. Townes Telecommunications is dedicated to providing fiber buildouts in these unserved and underserved communities, even though the rural setting presents unique challenges.

“You’ve got to think outside the box to get fiber broadband to some of these small count service areas,” says Tracy Mathews, Engineering Manager at Townes. They wanted to avoid larger, metal cabinets in rural, remote Florida locations and turned to Clearfield^® to address this challenge.

Solution

NEFCOM already had success with Clearfield’s FieldSmart^® Fiber Distribution Hub (FDH) 288-port PON Cabinets, Clearview^® Cassettes and WaveSmart^® Ruggedized Splitters. Now, in this setting with less population density, they considered the benefits of a PON in a PED solution.

Clearfield’s CraftSmart FiberFirst Pedestal “suits our rural situation perfectly.” Optimized for fiber-only deployments and offering configuration flexibility to suit the needs of the network, the unique open canvas design provides mounting options for a wide range of Clearfield products, including the PON Insert, splice-only tray, YOURx-Terminal and the MPT Terminal.

In the case of a rural deployment, when fewer fiber connections are needed, the use of a smaller footprint pedestal with a PON insert utilizing Clearview Cassettes meets the needs of the serving area – providing the essentials of only what was needed and nothing more. In other words, this gives a highly economical solution to connecting homes as they need to come online. “If we’d utilized one of our GPON cabinets, the cost per port would have been tremendous,” says Mathews. “This high cost would have resulted in people simply not getting fiber.”

Results

“The FiberFirst Pedestal is the Swiss Army Knife to have in your toolkit,” says Mathews. “Now, we’re not just stuck with a pre-set number of ports – some of which might go unused for a while. With Clearview Cassettes – which we already use in our cabinets – the solution is especially scalable and flexible. Because of the unpredictability of rural environments, it’s also important that we adjust. This solution can really grow as needed.”

The FiberFirst Pedestal is yet another of Clearfield’s modular, labor lite products that are purposefully engineered to make it easier to complete installations, with less skilled labor and equipment. When Townes Telecommunications is ready to expand in certain areas, they can quickly adjust and turn up customers – enabling a faster time to revenue.

About Townes Telecommunications, Inc.
Townes Telecommunications is responsible to the communities in which we live and work because our customers are also our friends, neighbors, and community partners. This responsibility compels us to provide our customers with the highest quality telecommunications services and reliable internet access at reasonable prices. NEFCOM Communications is a wholly owned subsidiary of Townes Telecommunications, Inc.

About Clearfield, Inc.
Clearfield, Inc. (NASDAQ: CLFD) designs, manufactures and distributes fiber optic management, protection and delivery products for communications networks. Our “fiber to anywhere” platform serves the unique requirements of leading incumbent local exchange carriers (traditional carriers), competitive local exchange carriers (alternative carriers), and MSO/cable TV companies, while also catering to the broadband needs of the utility/municipality, enterprise and military markets. Headquartered in Minneapolis, MN, Clearfield deploys more than a million fiber ports each year. For more information, visit www.SeeClearfield.com.