DALLAS – DZS (Nasdaq: DZSI), a global leader in access networking and cloud software solutions, today announced the ongoing success of its mission to bridge the digital divide by way of a longstanding partnership with Myakka Communications to deliver "Broadband to the Boonies" to southwest Florida.

Recently recognized as the "Fastest Fiber Providers in Florida" with symmetrical gigagbit available to all subscribers, this local, family-owned service provider was the first to offer high-speed broadband to Myakka City and the surrounding area, and today delivers the hyper-speed service levels needed for increasingly popular use cases like virtual meetings, gaming, telemedicine, start-ups and emerging metaverse experiences.

"The major local service providers provided telephone and cable services in our region told us it would be decades before they brought broadband services to eastern Manatee County, so we decided to bring 'broadband to the boonies' ourselves. We are extremely satisfied and have been a 'chief cheerleader' for DZS since we first visited their R&D center and manufacturing facility here in Florida and partnered with them in 2011," said Charles J. (Charley) Matson, CEO, Myakka Communications.

Myakka Communications started out as a wireless internet service provider (WISP) but faced significant operational challenges, especially due to a high prevalence of lightning strikes causing outages. They began building out their fiber network with help from USDA grant/loan broadband stimulus dollars and their technology partner DZS back in 2011. Downtime is now close to zero and service calls have decreased by over 90% since moving to a fiber-based network. Time spent on service calls is also significantly less with fiber and it can all be done from the ground.

Myakka Communications has used DZS Passive Optical Network (PON) broadband connectivity solutions exclusively since they first began deploying fiber infrastructure. This currently includes massively scalable and non-blocking DZS Velocity Intelligent Terabit Access Concentrators (OLTs) and DZS Helix Optical Network Terminals (ONTs) and WiFi gateways.

Read the full announcement here.

DZS