Fibertech, which operates metro networks across the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Midwest, has picked gear from Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings) to power a mobile backhaul network. They are building out to 250 cell towers across the state of Connecticut for a wireless carrier in preparation for 4G.
Fibertech has extensive regional and metro fiber in Connecticut, which otherwise is not a hotbed of competitive fiber buildouts beyond Stamford. They also do quite well with smaller bandwidth commits when building out fiber, so they’re a natural for some fiber-to-the-tower and aggregation work in the state. They’ll be using Ciena’s service aggregation and service delivery switches to put together a Carrier Ethernet powered backhaul network.
As for who the wirelesss carrier is… Verizon has its own assets in the state, Sprint probably isn’t ready yet, and Clearwire’s buildout is on hold. That pretty much leaves AT&T, which is of course in the midst of a major LTE buildout and is surely the carrier behind this buildout.
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Categories: Metro fiber · Wireless
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I dont think Sprint is as far behind as you think. They have been actively soliciting providers and upgrading there backhaul capacity across the USA.
But att is likely in this situation
I have seen the KML from a Sprint PCN in Kansas and they are full speed ahead (in that region) in building their LTE network.