South Slope Cooperative Communications Company, Iowa’s largest independent cooperative telephone company, is partnering with Clearfield Inc. on a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) deployment ultimately covering 310 square miles between Iowa City and Cedar Rapids.

Completion of this project will allow the carrier to offer its customers such broadband services as Ethernet access, high speed Internet, HDTV and voice.

The project began in the North Liberty exchange, the first of a multi-phase FTTH "overbuild" of South Slope’s entire service area. According to Transmissions Systems Engineer Phil Jones, the company has been offering FTTH for six years and has approximately 2,500 subscribers. In addition to North Liberty, South Slope serves approximately 15 Iowa communities, including Amana, Ely, Fairfax, Newhall, Norway, Oxford, Solon, Shueyville, Tiffin, Watkins, Walford, Western, South Cedar Rapids and parts of Coralville.

The ILEC says it chose Clearfield because of the tens of thousands of individual fibers being deployed as part of the active Ethernet solution. According to Clearfield, its FieldSmart Fiber Crossover Distribution System (FxDS), a custom-configured system of fiber-management components that reduces the cost of fiber deployment while maximizing ease of use and system density, will help South Slope manage those fibers.

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