Nokia has announced a Rural Broadband Relief Program for regional service providers in North America aspiring to close the digital divide.
Nokia has set aside 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.
Households in unserved or underserved areas have been hardest hit by global supply chain shortages of telecommunications equipment as operators planning new gigabit broadband networks have been unable to complete their builds.
While both public and private funds are available in unprecedented quantities, many small operators have found themselves unable to secure the necessary materials from their established supply chains to meet their self-imposed construction schedules or regulatory-imposed milestones.
Each Nokia Broadband Relief Kit is comprised of the necessary FTTH equipment, software licenses, support, and state-of-the-art in-home WiFi gateways required to serve a typical town of 1,000 households. The kits support GPON and XGS-PON over a single port and fiber using Nokia’s Multi-PON-Module (MPM) technology.
Sandy Motley, President, Fixed Networks at Nokia, said: “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.”
