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Municipal FTTH Deployment Snapshot
Gainesville Regional Utilities
– Gainesville, Florida
This month’s featured municipal FTTH deployer is Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRUCom), the fiber-to-the-home provider
for the city of Gainesville, Florida, and surrounding areas. GRU began by providing network connectivity to city government
and schools – which it still does – and expanded its mission to deliver Ethernet-based services to businesses in the 1990s,
well before fiber-to-the-premises technology had even come of age. Later it added connections to MDUs, predominantly for
student housing (GRU’s residential service is called Gator.net, after the University of Florida’s athletic teams), and in 2007
it began serving fiber to homes in greenfield housing developments. Our thanks to Frank Latini, Technical Services Manager,
and Tammy Snyder, Network Operations Center Supervisor, for gathering the information for this snapshot. Find out more at
www.gru.com.
– BBP Editors
Background
Provider name: Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRUCom)
Public entity owning the provider:
City of Gainesville, Florida
FTTH/FTTB service area: Gainesville Regional Utilities service
area, which includes Gainesville and the surrounding
unincorporated areas
Number of FTTH/FTTB subscribers: 4,800
Competitive landscape: AT&T offers DSL and telephone;
Cox Communications offers triple-play services
Network Profile
Miles of fiber backbone: 300 cable miles
Network architecture: Active Ethernet – FTTB for businesses
and multiple dwelling units, FTTH for greenfield
housing developments
Business model: Both wholesale (bulk services through
MDU owners) and retail
Services offered: GRUCom provides both Metro Ethernet
and SONET-based services including high-speed Internet
access (bulk and retail), data transport, data center
co-location, public safety data and radio communications,
and carrier-class, point-to-point data circuits. Accelerated
dial-up Internet access is also offered.
Highest tier Internet access speeds:
100 Mbps symmetrical
Year deployment started: GRUCom began offering commercial
services in 1996, then added high-speed Internet
access in 2000.
Years to complete buildout: Buildout is continuing;
the FTTH project begun in 2007 will take 10 years
to complete
Economic Development Impact
Our network has attracted businesses to the area and allowed
them to expand. The Progress Corporate Park,
located outside Alachua, Florida, is one example. The research
park is home to many businesses, including the
University of Florida’s Sid Martin Biotechnology Incubator.
Since we began offering services to businesses in the park
in 1998 there has been growth in the biotech sector and
new buildings continue to spring up in the park.
GRUCom is also scheduled to provide fiber services to
Santa Fe College’s new Alachua Corporate Training Center,
which will be located next to Progress Corporate Park. The
center will provide workforce training for the biotech industry.
The City of Gainesville also partnered with the Council
on Economic Development to provide high-speed connectivity
to the Gainesville Technology Enterprise Center, which
fosters early-stage technology start-up companies. Several
businesses that received connectivity at the enterprise center
have matured and moved to locations where GRUCom’s
services are available and continue to use them today. The
22 | BROADBAND PROPERTIES | www.broadbandproperties.com | April 2009