US telco Northeast Louisiana Telephone Company, a winner in round one of the Broadband Initiatives Program of last year's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, has formally selected the Calix Unified Access portfolio to deliver Active Ethernet solutions to thousands of premises in Morehouse Parish, Louisiana.

Thanks to the US$ 12.4mn it is receiving in Broadband Stimulus grants and loans, the company plans to replace its ageing copper infrastructure with an advanced fibre-based network interconnected via 10 Gbps Ethernet rings, enabling the delivery of high-speed broadband, VoIP and IPTV services.  In addition to its fibre access buildout, the company will also deploy a a new digital IPTV headend.

"The Broadband Stimulus program gave us the opportunity to start with a clean slate and build the network that would best serve the long term needs of our customers while providing the operations efficiencies we needed for sustainability," said Mike George, President and General Manager of Northeast Louisiana Telephone Company.  "We knew from the start that Active Ethernet was the technology that we wanted to deploy […] we look forward to delivering a host of advanced services to the residents of Morehouse Parish for years to come."