The feds will announce the first round of broadband stimulus grant winners in three weeks. After that, construction and completion deadlines will kick in, bringing with them the temptation for recipients to rush through their multimillion-dollar projects.
Not so fast. Rural providers in particular should take advantage of other, larger operators’ best practices and lessons learned, since many will be tackling next-generation network buildouts for the first time – similar to the first-time infrastructure installations happening in Asia and Africa. Because of that, JDS Uniphase (JDSU) this month kicked off its Broadband@Work Across America campaign, which contains both education and marketing elements.
JDSU is a 30-year-old manufacturer of testing tools and other devices for communications networks. The company, though, has struggled since the tech bust earlier this decade. In fact, it was having enough of a crisis to prompt one 24/7 Wall St. blogger in 2007 to call the firm “an old fiber-optics company trying to find its groove.” JDSU has recovered somewhat over the past few years, despite six consecutive quarterly losses, and the broadband stimulus program could be its final ticket to revival. To that end, JDSU is pinpointing new ways to help its clients amid what Jon Beckman, director of strategy for test instruments, calls “a historic opportunity.”
JDSU bills Broadband@Work as an initiative “to raise awareness and provide education on the technical issues and challenges that could impact rural service providers as they deploy broadband.”
But what does that mean? Well, as the feds announce grant winners, and as recipients dive into those projects, it means field consulting, free Webinars and, of course, sales of JDSU’s tools.
Getting broadband to unserved and underserved areas will require wireline providers to think through those deployments in ways they’ve perhaps never done. This won’t be as easy as it sounds. For example, Beckman said, if a company hasn’t worked with fiber, technicians might not know that dirt contaminates the line and can damage equipment. Or, what about configuration errors in Ethernet equipment? That can cause frame loss and delay. JDSU also cites DSL installations – a carrier new to the high-speed world may not know offhand how to fix wideband and impulse noise problems before they hurt service quality.
