Midco is using supplier's products to create point-to-point wireless backhaul connections tailored for rural areas.

December 1, 2020

2 Min Read

MINNEAPOLIS – Clearfield, Inc. (NASDAQ:CLFD), the specialist in fiber management for communication service providers, today announced that Midco Communications (Midco) is utilizing its Clearfield YOURx Flex Box, Clearview Blue Cassette, FieldShield FLATdrop and fiber cables to cost effectively create higher bandwidth point-to-point wireless backhaul connections in its network. Clearfield and Midco collaborated to craft a unique approach to bringing fiber from the base to the top of tall structures such as grain elevators, grain legs and water towers to serve as signal hand-off sites to provide broadband to the communities it serves.

Midco serves more than 400,000 customers across Kansas, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. Its service area reaches many rural communities and geographical locations that are exposed to harsh natural environments such as blizzards and high winds. To deliver broadband services, Midco needed a connectivity approach to link places that could not be reached with fiber today and equipment able to withstand the harsh outdoor environments. By listening to Midco's needs, including working with components such as radios that were not specifically designed for fiber, Clearfield was able to produce custom, future-proof solutions that enabled Midco to place 24 fibers, nearly double the quantity in a traditional deployment, to the top of existing structures with one cable.

To-date, Midco has installed Clearfield's fiber solutions at fifteen sites with plans to continue deployment at additional sites, offering its subscribers in rural and farming communities 100 Mbps connections and enabling them to benefit from the lifestyle better broadband provides.

To meet the installation time goal, Clearfield's YOURx Flex Box arrived at Midco with a 300 foot FieldShield FLATdrop pigtail. At the top of the structure, the Flex Box was mounted on a rail. From the Flex Box, the duplex assembly was installed onto the structure to the individual radios; one cable per radio. The radio side of the assembly used a specially designed protective sleeve and a collar to ensure network integrity. By using this approach and preconfigured solutions, Clearfield was able to complete this deployment in two hours, saving money and speeding time to service availability.

Clearfield
Midco

Subscribe and receive the latest news from the industry.
Join 62,000+ members. Yes it's completely free.

You May Also Like