Farmers Telephone Building Fiber to 10,000 Homes in SC

MINNEAPOLIS — Over the course of the next two years, about 10,000 households in South Carolina will be connected to fiber by Farmers Telephone Cooperative (FTC), the country's second-largest telephone cooperative. Residents along a 400-mile corridor of new fiber will realize the benefits of fiber-based communications for phone service, digital TV, high-speed Internet, security and wireless service.

In this PON project, FTC will use Clearfield’s FieldSmart products for fiber management - the Fiber Scalability Center in the outside plant and the Fiber Crossover Distribution System in the inside plant, as well as associated optical component technologies. To optimize performance and reduce energy consumption, FTC will also deploy Clearfield’s FiberDeep OSP fiber pigtails throughout the build.

FTC plant design supervisor Mark Brown says, “FTC has purchased fiber management panels from Clearfield for years. We were always pleased with the quality of the products and the speed [with] which we received them. But, frankly, they were just like all of the other management panels. Once Clearfield introduced the Clearview Cassette, we instantly saw the value in a scalable product group that could be grown to the need instead of just being built to last.”

“The cassette also eliminated a failure point in protecting the vulnerable back side of the panel to fiber breaks due to improper assembly or installation,” Brown adds.