Clark College upgrades fiber infrastructure with TE Connectivity

TE Connectivity (NYSE: TEL) announced that Clark College in southwestern Washington state has upgraded its campus-wide broadband infrastructure with TE's fiber solutions. The college moved from 1-Gigabit to 10-Gigabit fiber with the potential for upgrades to faster speeds over time.

According to a TE press release, for years, the campus had relied on multimode fiber for connectivity, but distance and bandwidth limitations made it time to change. TE and contractor Cochran Electric deployed 24-fiber multifiber push-on (MPO) trunks with Q3000 panels, 10-Gigabit MPO fiber blades, and RMG series rack-mount fiber enclosures to support the upgrade. New fiber was installed – 48 strands each of single-mode and multimode fiber per building – to provide redundancy and mitigate any downtime.

“TE gave us the infrastructure that would provide our campus with the greatest flexibility for the foreseeable future,” says Patrick Taylor, director of IT infrastructure and security at Clark College. “We installed all new fiber, both multimode and single-mode, to handle anything that might come down the road. The ability to simply swap out a cassette in the closet to upgrade to faster speeds really future-proofs this entire installation.”

Established in 1933, Clark College prides itself as "a thriving educational institution with a student body 13,000 strong that jump-starts careers in a number of promising professions. On a campus comprised of 32 separate buildings as well as three remote campuses, meeting its networking requirements with the best technology possible has always been a top priority for Clark College," said a spokesperson for the institution.

“A fiber plant is an investment that should last 25 years or more,” concludes Mark Hesling, global vice president of product management at TE. “Our fiber solutions are designed to support maximum flexibility and performance with plug-and-play modules to support upgrades to higher speeds over the life of the deployment.”