Chariton Valley

"Wave7's LML has proven to be a great product. Their dedication to the product development and customer support has been excellent."

Jim Simon
Assistant Wireline GM
Chariton Valley Telephone, MO

Situation - Chariton Valley Telephone (CVT) was incorporated in 1952 and operates as a cooperative. The company services more than 8,000 local access lines within 18 exchanges in rural north central Missouri. CVT has grown and expanded over the last 50 years and has created numerous subsidiary companies to offer communications products such as cable television, paging, two-way radio, wireless, long distance, voice mail, calling cards, internet, and wireless internet.

In 2002 and 2003, CVT decided to augment their broadband infrastructure with the intention of deploying “triple play” services for residential customers and supporting the business community with additional “enterprise class” services, such as VLAN, GigE and others. The company wanted to connect their "ILEC" and "CLEC" service areas with the most-advance fiber optic network in the state.

Prospects - CVT conducted feasibility studies to determine the best network equipment vendor to support their plan to deploy FTTP in Macon, Missouri and subsequently in the communities of Bevier, Callao, New Cambria and Bucklin – beginning in 2003 and ending in 2005. CVT planned to connect 2,850 homes and businesses in the Macon area over a 12- to 18-month period and connect a combined 1,000 customers in the other communities to the industry’s most-advanced voice, data, and video broadband system.

Solution - In selecting the Last Mile Link system from Wave7 Optics, announced in March 2003, Bill Biere, former General Manager of Chariton Valley commented at the time: "Wave7 has the technology and experience we are looking for and their network architecture offers several cost and technological advantages, compared to other broadband systems, including DSL and HFC."

Similar to other LML implementations, Wave7 Optics’ role in the Chariton Valley project is the FTTx equipment provider and trainer and the end-to-end turnkey systems integrator. Chariton Valley is deploying an end-to-end Last Mile Link system, including the Last Mile Core and the family of Last Mile Gateway products. In this situation, CVT is overbuilding existing copper and coaxial plant to provide the new triple play service.

"With this deployment we have the most advanced network in the state," said Biere. "With the price of fiber dropping like it is, I’m surprised more service providers aren’t doing this."

Current Situation - Chariton Valley now exceeds 2,150 subscribers in their Macon CLEC territory and installations continue apace in their ILEC territories, which now exceeds 900 subscribers, with central offices in Bevier (342 subscribers), Bucklin (273 subscribers), Callao (152 subscribers), and New Cambria (127 subscribers) now operational. The towns of Salisbury and Huntsville, MO are 2006 objectives. Chariton Valley is expecting more than 4,500 aggregate subscribers active before the end of 2006.