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October 20, 2015

MaxxSouth Illustrates its Fiber Deployment to FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai


By Michael Guta
Contributing Writer

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The visit by the commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC (News - Alert)), Ajit Pai, to see the deployment of MaxxSouth Broadband's fiber-to-the-home facilities in Mississippi is part of the government’s push to further expand broadband availability nationwide.


The U.S and every other country in the world have been urging private companies to speed their implementation of fiber to deliver their service. This has been accomplished with many different incentives, including taxation and partial funding of respective governments.

The visit by Pai at two Mississippi communities is particularly made to highlight the need for rural broadband deployment. For its part MaxxSouth has been expanding access to communities in Mississippi, many of which are rural.

"MaxxSouth Broadband is committed to aggressively deploying high-speed broadband services," said Peter Kahelin, MaxxSouth Broadband's President and CEO. "We were honored to share with Commissioner Pai our strategy and insights on how to connect residents and businesses in smaller communities. It's a huge compliment that MaxxSouth Broadband could serve as a role model for getting the job done right."

Image via Shutterstock

The company provides services to 60 communities in the state with cable-based TV, Internet and IP telephony in an area that spans more than 200 miles. This includes the University of Mississippi in Oxford and Mississippi State University in Starkville, both of which require high broadband availability at all times.

In addition to both institutions, the company also provides services to consumers and businesses across these locations. Some of the infrastructure the commissioner visited were the optical line terminals and related infrastructure supporting fiber-to-the-home deployments in cities of Carthage and its 5,000 residents and the close to 24,000 people of Starkville.

The FCC broadband initiatives were passed by the President and Congress to complete the effort in making broadband or high speed access to the Internet available to every community in the United States in 2009. The National Broadband Plan was part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and it has made more than $7.2 billion available in that endeavor.

A couple of the goals were to have 100 million American households with access to 100 Mbit/s (megabits per second) connections by 2020, and give every American an affordable access to broadband service.

The only roadblock to the full deployments were the statewide bans on municipally owned cable and broadband providers. The ruling by the FCC in March of this year now means states and municipalities are now free to move forward to expand broadband where it was not possible because of the restrictions on public ownership of broadband networks.




Edited by Kyle Piscioniere
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