The Truckee Donner Public Utility District in California has selected Texas-based Eagle Broadband (League City, TX; www.eaglebroadband.com) to provide digital voice, video, data and security services for the district's gigantic residential area.
"If we can get these services deployed to a community, it would provide tremendous benefits," says Alan Harry, director of telecommunications services for the Truckee Donner Public Utility.
The project is representative of a growing trend by public utilities and municipalities to build and operate their own optical-fiber broadband networks to deliver advanced communications services.
Contractors have not yet been selected for the project, which is designed to bring broadband services to 12,000-plus homes, businesses, schools, hospitals, and government agencies in the district's service area. The optical-fiber infrastructure will provide digital video, video-on-demand, high-speed Internet, telephone, security monitoring and home automation services. "The network will be capable of supporting advanced services like high-definition TV (HDTV)," says John Nagel, vice president of engineering for Eagle Broadband.
The $15 million project will take about 18 months to complete.
"This is one of the larger deployments in terms of the number of homes and residences, in excess of 12,000," says Randy Shapiro, vice president of marketing for Eagle.
The company describes its offering as a "four-play" of bundled services that includes voice, video, data and security monitoring.