Home Town Cable Plus is an integrated service provider operating in the city of Port St. Lucie as well as in the county of St. Lucie in Florida. Just three years ago, the new company embarked upon its plan to build a passive optical network (PON) to link homes and businesses in its service area to the company data center. Home Town officially opened for business in September 2003 with a bundle that includes standard POTS as well as alarm and monitoring services. In addition, Home Town offers 217 channels of SDV (switched digital video) and gigabit Ethernet high-speed Internet service over the advanced IP-based network | Delivering Services over FTTP the Home Town Way Situation Home Town Cable Plus is an integrated service provider operating in the city of Port St. Lucie as well as in the county of St. Lucie in Florida. Just three years ago the new company embarked upon its plan to build a passive optical network PON to link homes and businesses in its service area to the company data center. Home Town officially opened for business in September 2003 with a bundle that includes standard POTS as well as alarm and monitoring services. In addition Home Town offers 217 channels of SDV switched digital video and gigabit Ethernet high-speed Internet service over the advanced IP-based network. As Home Town management drew-up its business and operating plans it was clear that offering highly competitive pricing and operating profitably was going to require long term cost containment. In addition as a pioneer in delivering services over a fiber-to-the-premise network it was also clear that Home Town s PON architecture was unique. It was going to require a different approach in the outside plant and more than off-the-shelf solutions to maintain reliable service levels and speed service turn-up. Fiber Fc-ûdcr To Head nd Figure 1 PON Design for Home Town Cable Plus A Design Takes Shape The Home Town network was conceived as a two-fiber system one fiber for voice and data and one for video. In addition planners elected to aggregate drop cables in fewer points in neighborhoods a design resulting in far fewer above ground terminals that would appeal to both builders and homeowners. The PON was designed around two major components Neighborhood Access Points NAP and Local Conversion Points LCP each of which feeds multiple NAPs shown in Figure 1. LCP and NAP cabinets would house splitters splices and distribution panels. As with any PON all active equipment is centralized in the headend and splitters deployed in the field so that PON cards in the headend are purchased and activated in unison with .
