Also yesterday, Lumos Networks is planning an overhaul of its fiber-to-the-cell network, preparing for the coming LTE flood with the not so subtle moniker ‘Project Ark”.
The object is to, umm, stay afloat through the next few LTE-driven wireless years with another terabyte of total capacity, and at least 400Mbps for each of what will be around 1,500 cell sites. Lumos says its cell traffic is 8-10 times what it was two years ago, and the additional capacity will add another order of magnitude in order to deal with the next, err, wave. I’m not sure where they’re putting the animals though.
Wireless backhaul has been one of Lumos’s fastest growing businesses since the spinoff from nTelos. The company’s CEO, Tim Biltz, was featured here in an Industry Spotlight last summer, where he offered insights into the company’s approach.
They’ve tapped Cisco gear for the upgrade, which will boost the capacity and capability of the MPLS/IP backbone they use to backhaul and transport data from cell sites. They’ll start building the new network in Q2, start routing traffic over it in Q4 of this year, and have it all migrated in early 2015.
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Categories: Metro fiber · Wireless
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This is very interesting — I wonder how much extra coverage they’re going to be able to get. I imagine the network rebuild is going to be quite an extensive process.