The Fiber Broadband Association (FBA) pulled off an amazing event in Nashville July 28-31. The city’s vivid, creative energy was the perfect backdrop, giving the event an extra boost. This was especially true during the “Fiber for Breakfast” fire chat between Nashville Predators’ CEO Sean Henry and FBA President Gary Bolton.
Open to share, inviting to network
One thing the show excelled at—something we in Europe could learn from—was creating an inviting atmosphere that encouraged sharing and networking. Attendees were genuinely eager to engage in conversations, curious to know who you are, what you do, and what problem you are set to solve – and equally interested in sharing their own experiences and ideas, making for some very enriching discussions.
Keep engaging with your CATV subscribers
Among the 5,000 attendees, a notable number of cable operators were in different stages of considering moving to fiber. Many of them visited – and revisited – the Genexis booth when they learned that with Genexis ONTs can maintain the CATV services, preserving both revenue and use of existing RF infrastructure. Genexis FiberTwist models, whether for GPON, XGS-PON or 10G Active Ethernet, all offer the CATV overlay feature.
Smoothen and speed up fiber deployments
Although the event had a very broad agenda, from Fiber Broadband Starter toolkit to AI and Quantum computing, from BEAD application administration to the importance of people and a positive company culture to reach the success of UTOPIA fiber. But the overarching theme was: “the urgent need to accelerate fiber rollouts.”
FBA Chairman Jimmy Todd arrived on stage on his motorbike, telling a colorful story of how he sees from his bike the U.S. thriving wherever fiber broadband is installed. Teddy Bekele, SVP and CTO of Land O’Lakes shared what big achievements happen when 300.000 domestic producers and 10.000 rural communities connect digitally via their network.
At the Genexis booth, we were overwhelmed by the intense discussions around how a universal, OLT-independent ONT can speed up deployments. Many visitors were eager to test the “installation in under 10 seconds – from closed box to installed, powered up ONT.”
Seeing is believing
Tradeshows have a big advantage in that you can touch the products yourself and challenge claims. The Do-It-Yourself (DIY) concept of the FiberTwist was heavily tested at the show by amazed visitors. With the shortage of skilled labor being a hot topic in keynotes and break-out sessions, the idea that a two-year-old could install an ONT sparked many new conversations.
One of our U.S. partners, RocNet, had a demo on the tradeshow floor, allowing visitors to manually move the connecting cable to Genexis ONTs between different brands of OLTs and see how the video stream came back on the screen.
If you want to learn more about what an OLT-independent ONT can do for your fiber deployment, contact us! Or enjoy the video of Selma, 2 years old, installing a Genexis FiberTwist ONT.
