Designing at the Speed of PON - The Greystone Connect and Aurora Networks Professional Services Story
The Aurora Networks Professional Services Team is accelerating the design and deployment of PON networks.
As competition for broadband subscribers intensifies, fiber operators are under growing pressure to expand network coverage quickly while controlling deployment costs. For providers building new fiber infrastructure in unserved and underserved communities, network design has become a critical factor in determining long-term profitability, service quality, and return on investment. Even small design inefficiencies can significantly increase construction expenses, operational costs, and future maintenance requirements.
GreyStone Connect, the broadband subsidiary of GreyStone Power, is bringing high-speed fiber broadband to thousands of underserved homes and businesses across Georgia. As part of its ambitious Phase 4 network expansion, the company planned to add approximately 1,400 miles of new fiber infrastructure and extend XGS-PON services to more than 17,000 additional locations. However, the original network design contained architectural and operational challenges that threatened to increase construction costs, complicate troubleshooting, and potentially impact long-term network performance. To keep the project on schedule and within budget, GreyStone Connect partnered with Aurora Networks Professional Services to rapidly evaluate and redesign the network.
Working under an accelerated three-month timeline, the Aurora Networks Professional Services team developed a new construction-ready design that reduced underground infrastructure requirements, improved optical network efficiency, and simplified future service and maintenance operations. Leveraging deep FTTH design expertise and Aurora Networks' Fiber Tune optical validation platform, the team was able to quickly validate optical performance, eliminate design risk, and deliver a scalable network architecture capable of supporting symmetrical 10G XGS-PON services. The result was a cost-effective, high-performance fiber network design that enabled GreyStone Connect to meet its deployment milestones and continue expanding broadband access throughout its service area.
Objectives
- Expand high-speed fiber broadband access to unserved and underserved communities.
- Deploy a scalable, future-ready XGS-PON fiber infrastructure capable of delivering symmetrical 10 Gbps services and supporting long-term broadband growth across the service area.
- Complete the network design and construction on an aggressive schedule while controlling costs, ensuring the project remained within budget and could break ground as planned without compromising network performance or reliability.
Solution
- Trusted fiber network design expertise with decades of FTTH deployment experience.
- Proven ability to deliver high-quality network designs on aggressive project schedules.
- Cost-effective design and validation methodologies that improve network performance and accelerate deployment.
Benefits
- A Redesigned the Phase 4 fiber network architecture that replaced the original dual-sided underground ODN design with a more efficient single street-side underground deployment, significantly reducing construction complexity and excavation costs.
- A centralized fiber drop architecture that connected each home directly to a distribution point, eliminating the performance and troubleshooting challenges associated with the original daisy-chain tap design.
- A complete, construction-ready network design within a compressed three-month timeline, leveraging experienced design engineers, the CrescentLink platform, and Aurora Networks' Fiber Tune optical validation tool to rapidly validate designs and ensure all circuits met optical budget requirements before construction began.
