Montana, New Mexico exploring FTTH options

More states are pushing FTTH opportunities to support growing demands for faster Internet access and the benefits this can bring economically, as well as in health care, education, industry and more.

While fiber-optic deployments are often driven by utility and Internet providers, government officials are becoming more embroiled in the decision making due to the vast improvements fiber optics can bring to state and local infrastructure. This means stronger Internet support for businesses, schools, government offices, health care facilities and consumers, which can drive local economies and the quality of living in general.

Montana to explore fiber networks
Democratic Senate hopeful Dirk Adams of Wilsall, Mont., has promised that exploring fiber opportunities will be one of his goals for the state should he be elected, The Montana Standard recently reported.

"Fiber is 100 times faster [than Broadband]," Adams said, according to the news source. "If we don't have fiber our kids are left behind. It will be like trying to teach school without electricity."

This would be a major step forward for any state, let alone Montana, which has a large amount of rural towns that would benefit greatly from the enhanced Internet access. These efforts would allow medical facilities to share and access key information on patients faster, improve learning capabilities in schools and support local businesses in expanding their operations.

Adams hopes to obtain federal resources to support a fiber-optic initiative should he be elected.

New Mexico focusing on FTTH for rural counties
The Kit Carson Electric Cooperative recently announced that it has enlisted the assistance of Fujitsu to bring new FTTH projects to northern rural counties, according to Converge Digest. The counties of Colfax, Rio Arriba and Taos are all expected to receive new fiber deployments as part of a $64 million project to optimize rural utility support across the state. Fujitsu will be designing and engineering the infrastructure for the network, using a combination of Ethernet and Gigabit Passive Optical Networks. This infrastructure will also set the foundation for future smart grid efforts in the area.

For states looking to deploy higher-quality Internet availability to residents, the supporting hardware is just as important as the fiber-optic cabling investment. Fiber to Ethernet converters and other media converters play a critical role in providing high-quality, latency-free Internet access across long-distance fiber networks.

Perle has an extensive range of Managed and Unmanaged Fiber Media Converters to extended copper-based Ethernet equipment over a fiber optic link, multimode to multimode and multimode to single mode fiber up to 160km.