RLEC Lumos: SMBs Want Wired, Symmetrical, High-Speed Broadband

Small and midsize businesses in both urban and rural Virginia want providers to deliver ever-faster, fiber-based broadband at symmetrical speeds -- something Rural Local Exchange Carrier (RLEC) Lumos Networks planned for when it first designed, then deployed, 1 Gbit/s service.

The Waynesboro, Virginia-based RLEC amortized the cost and earned revenue on its early fiber optic cabling investments after debuting the gigabit offering in January 2016, said Diego Anderson, executive vice president and general manager at Lumos Networks, in an interview. (By April, all within Lumos' fiber-to-the-home footprint had access to this speed offering, the RLEC said.) Future-proofing the network was critical and as people use more video, WiFi, Internet of Things (IoT) devices and business services, that early adoption continues to pay off -- even among further-flung country residents, he said.

Today, SMBs are the biggest users of high-speed services at Lumos.

"They're trying to do more cloud services. They may want to do their own VPN and they're looking for that robust connectivity…," Anderson said. "A lot of those customers are looking at connecting those cloud services, and they need that symmetrical speed and the robustness that comes with the fatter pipe."

Residential customers don't lag in demand -- and they want equal upstream and downstream speeds, too, he noted. That's one reason Lumos' initial product offering will feature various speed profiles, including 2G/bits, 4Gbit/s and 8Gbit/s, said Anderson. As customer requirements evolve, Lumos will add new tiers of speeds and services, he noted, at healthy margins and differentiation.

For this network upgrade, Lumos chose to work with longtime partner ADTRAN, which provided the technology powering the 1Gbit/s version. The service provider selected ADTRAN's 10G fiber access portfolio so it can roll out 10Gbit/s or 10G fiber services to the gamut of existing -- and, it hopes, new -- customers across municipalities, government, education, healthcare, finance and SMB markets, as well as residential in time. Lumos first will tackle the Virginia area in and around Waynesboro, then Clifton Forge, followed by Covington and Botetourt County, with others to be named later, the provider said in a statement.

Although Lumos considered alternatives, the ADTRAN 5000 fiber broadband platform's upgradability, performance and speed in conjunction with the vendor's software-defined access architecture and 10G availability this quarter made it a relatively simple decision, Anderson said, noting the service provider works with some vendor partners for different technologies and specialties.

"The partnership includes not only just help setting up the equipment but also helping us in our design and how we apply technologies. We had test users and, whenever we thought we had an issue or [question about] the direction we should take, ADTRAN was right there for us and providing consultation," Anderson said. "That's how we measure being a partner. Service is also a big part of our value proposition and we need not only the ability to put the customer's system in, but also to help us maintain and service that solution so we can monitor and provide better service to our customers."

Any new technology Lumos brings aboard goes through a "productizing process," where the service providers' engineers and technicians learn the solution's every component, feature, and capability, so they're expert in deployment and answering hard questions to resolve any hard problems that arise during operations, he said.

"Whenever we launch a new product, we have a really comprehensive process we go through… from making sure we understand the requirements of what we're trying to deliver, what is the value proposition for the customer, the economics around it," said Anderson, "along with -- once we get that from a technical standpoint -- we then have to test it with our end-users and customers, and get feedback on how we can support it. All that went into our process of getting where we are now."

That also includes Lumos' focus on rural customers, expertise it has honed since winning a grant from the US Department of Agriculture in 2010 and beginning its relationship with ADTRAN. There may be more miles between individual subscribers, but that is the only difference between Lumos' customers in cities and villages, said Anderson.

"The application set for rural and small-business customers is the same as it is in metro areas. It doesn't mean that people in our footprint don't want to use telemedicine applications or work-at-home applications or don't have higher education requirements," he said. "All of those applications are still pertinent to the rural market. That's why what we do is so important to the communities that we serve."

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— Alison Diana, Editor, Broadband World News. Follow us on Twitter or @alisoncdiana.