Nokia has announced a Rural Broadband Relief Program for regional service providers in North America aspiring to close the digital divide.
Offering 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, and state-of-the-art in-home Wi-Fi gateways; supporting GPON and XGS-PON over a single port and fiber using Nokia’s Multi-PON-Module (MPM) technology.
This initiative is a response to small operators who have found themselves unable to secure the necessary materials from their established supply chains to meet their self-imposed construction schedules on building new gigabit broadband networks.
Sandy Motley, President, Fixed Networks at Nokia, said, “The pandemic magnified the importance of having broadband regardless of a household's geographical location. Families residing in rural communities, particularly those with school-aged children, suffered greatly from a lack of broadband and ability to participate in remote learning. 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.”
Nokia’s global supply chain has allowed them to excel in this vertical. According to Dell’Oro, Nokia was the 2021 market share leader for XGS-PON equipment, with seven out of ten fiber homes in the USA being served using a Nokia FTTH kit.