Nokia announced a Rural Broadband Relief Program for regional service providers in North America — at the Fiber Connect conference.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in May announced that it is ready to authorize $200 million through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund to fund new broadband deployments in 26 states and the Northern Mariana Islands bringing service to over 230,000 locations.
“We’re also working hard to make the best use of this funding to ensure that applicants meet their obligations and follow our rules. With proper oversight, this program can advance our goal of closing the digital divide,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in May.
In January, FCC established the Rural Broadband Accountability Plan, in an effort to monitor and ensure compliance for universal service high-cost programs, including the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund and the Connect America Fund (CAF) Phase II Auction.
Nokia said it has set aside Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH) kits for expedited delivery to rural service providers. Each network-in-a-box kit is suitable for building a network for a town of up to 1,000 homes.
Each Nokia Broadband Relief Kit is comprised of the necessary FTTH equipment, software licenses, support, and in-home WiFi gateways required to serve a typical town of 1,000 households. The kits support GPON and XGS-PON over a single port and fiber using Nokia’s Multi-PON-Module (MPM) technology.
Sandy Motley, President, Fixed Networks at Nokia, said: “We want to support the operators launching in hyper-localized markets but who cannot secure broadband equipment in these difficult times. In addition, we also believe that all service providers need to have one eye on the future, so all the kits can support 25G PON today or when the need arises.”
Jeff Heynen, VP of Broadband Access and Home Networking at Dell’Oro Group, said: “While nearly every company in every industry has been impacted by global shortages of critical electronic components and chips, Nokia’s global supply chain has allowed them to fair a bit better than other companies in this market vertical.”
According to Dell’Oro, Finland-based Nokia was the 2021 market share leader for XGS-PON equipment: Seven out of 10 fiber homes in the USA are served using Nokia FTTH kit.
