ADTRAN tells us that Volt Broadband is leveraging ADTRAN’s end-to-end fiber broadband solution to launch fiber broadband services and close the digital divide in rural Louisiana.
Volt Broadband is an internet service provider (ISP) and a subsidiary of Northeast Louisiana Power Cooperative. The ISP is a Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) recipient and is leveraging the funding to satisfy the need for connectivity in a region where most rural communities have been severely underserved until now.
“We’re committed to delivering reliable, affordable high-speed internet connections that will eliminate the digital equity gap here in Louisiana. To accomplish this, we need solutions that are reliable and easy to work with, which led us to ADTRAN,” said Jeff Churchwell, General Manager at Volt Broadband. “Our fiber network will improve everything for our communities, and we’re excited about the many opportunities this will create. Once completed, this project will enable the people who live on 40 acres, 10 miles away from town to have better internet service than people that live on Main Street. From education and streaming entertainment to telemedicine and farming, the Internet of Things has come to Northeast Louisiana.”
Volt Broadband’s network includes 2,000 fiber miles and passes 11,500 homes. The ISP connected its first customer in September 2022. Currently, Volt Broadband offers its residential customers broadband speeds up to a Gigabit while businesses can purchase multi-gigabit services. The rural communities that Volt Broadband serves are home to many farms and the ISP hopes its fiber broadband infrastructure will empower subscribers to adopt precision agriculture applications. Volt Broadband is helping them research new approaches to farming that leverage connected sensors to better monitor and automate the management of moisture meters, grain bins, aquatic tanks and more.
Volt Broadband hired several fiber experts to deploy and manage the fiber network and together they chose ADTRAN’s end-to-end fiber broadband solution. Volt Broadband is leveraging the ADTRAN with 10G Combo PON technology and Mosaic One, ADTRAN’s that provides AI-driven insights and actionable intelligence. The Combo PON technology supports GPON and XGS-PON services simultaneously, allowing Volt Broadband to easily scale existing services while having the flexibility to support future broadband use cases. Mosaic One offers a single sign-on experience that respectively equips customer support teams, network engineers and marketers to quickly resolve customer issues, preempt impending network issues and assess customer behavior to expertly guide their campaigns.
“Recent broadband funding has created the opportunity for many new types of fiber broadband providers to emerge, like Volt Broadband that was created by a power cooperative. These new providers rely on experienced partners to deliver solutions they can trust,” said Brent Cancienne, Vice President, U.S. Regional Sales at ADTRAN. “We offer our customers decades of experience in broadband access networks, and we are honored to help Volt Broadband and others unlock their communities’ potential through Gigabit broadband services that will support critical applications today and into the future using broadband products designed and built in America.”
