South Dakota’s WestRiver Cooperative Telephone Company (WRCTC) has installed Fujitsu Network Communications Inc.’s FLASHWAVE optical networking solutions to bring broadband services to the western part of the state.

    The $819,000 network,which serves eight rural areas and covers approximately 6,500 square miles, enables WRCTC to offer advanced voice and high-speed Internet access services to its customers.

    The new network includes Fujitsu FLASHWAVE 4500 multiservice provisioning platforms (MSPPs) installed at 10 locations in western South Dakota. The nodes are connected via an OC 192 (10gbps) SONET optical fiber ring. Two Fujitsu FLASHWAVE 4100 Extension Shelf (ES) nodes were also installed at WRCTC headquarters in Bison, S.D., to aggregate circuits into larger connections and interconnect with the Internet backbone.

    There also are gigabit Ethernet and fast Ethernet (100mbps) circuits between locations, and the WRCTC has leveraged resilient packet ring capabilities of the FLASHWAVE platforms to optimize the transport of Ethernet circuits on its network and allow voice and data traffic to be shared between WRCTC sites without dedicated lines to each one.