All ship-shape and Bristol fashion for 1Gbps network

The US city of Bristol, Tennessee has installed a 1Gbps broadband network for all 33,000 residential and business electric customers of Bristol Tennessee Essential Services (BTES).

The network is based on Alcatel-Lucent’s gigabit passive optical network (GPON) technology, including GPON-enabled 7342 ISAM FTTU optical line terminals (OLTs) and optical network terminals (ONTs).

BTES’ OLTs connect to a 10 gigabit backbone via Alcatel-Lucent’s 7450 ESS switches and are aggregated through a pair of 7750 BSR routers to 10 gigabits of internet capacity.

BTES’ ONTs are capable of providing advanced IPTV video services along with traditional cable television, telephone and up to one gigabit per second of internet bandwidth.

The new network is ten times faster than the US Federal Communication Commission’s National Broadband Plan calling for 100Mbps speeds for 100 million households nationwide by 2020, and offers similar speeds to that offered by the Google Fiber network in Kansas City.