Clearfield Inc. recently announced that in its five-year history it has shipped more than 6 million fiber ports, including nearly 2 million over the past year.
The company’s president and chief executive officer Cheri Beranek said, “Serving the rural telephone marketplace has been paramount to Clearfield’s early success. With hundreds of small companies across the country, we have the great fortune of serving a very broad market.”
Two customers commented on behalf of Clearfield as the company achieved this milestone. Troy Friday, outside-plant manager for McDonough Telephone Cooperative in west central Illinois, said, “We’ve used Clearfield throughout our deployment. When we made the decision to use Clearfield, we knew performance of the terminated fiber end would always be stellar.”
McDonough comprises 12 exchanges serving 20 communities and has been building a fiber-to-the-home network for its 3,700 members using Clearfield’s FieldSmart FxHD high-density fiber distribution frame. Density and the ability to reduce footprint was a crucial part of the network design.
Friday continued, “Throughout the deployment, we’ve had access to Clearfield engineers, which has been an added bonus. This latest product builds on the modularity of the platform and that keeps our operating costs in check.”
Another testimonial came from Minford Telephone Company, serving the hilly area of southern Ohio, which has seen farmers sporadically sell off certain parts of their acreage to be developed into new residential or business areas. As Minfold works to provide fiber-optic service to these areas, it has found growth-forecasting to be challenging.
Minfold project manager Casey Neal commented, “Clearfield’s flexibility in their PON cabinets allows us to plan the best we can, with the comfort of knowing the ease of adding in more distribution fibers, if needed, in the future.”
Another of Minfold’s core offerings is the provision of IPTV signal coverage for their service area. Clearfield says its FieldSmart FxDS Frame with a PON Insert fits well into a small space tower building placed next to the antenna equipment. “Contractors find the installation of Clearfield products to be very intuitive and consistent throughout all parts of the network,” Neal added.
Beranek concluded, “McDonough and Minfold telephone companies are both prime examples of the work that our rural telephone companies are doing. We’re thrilled to be working with our core base of broadband service providers as they build their business with an expanding presence in both wireline as well as wireless connectivity markets.”