The Transportation Corridor Agencies (TCA) operates toll roads in Orange County California, and installed a fiber network when building the 241& 261 toll road that runs along Eastern Orange County near the Cleveland National Forest. Construction of the 105 foot high cell towers began in June 2009. A single mode fiber network was installed when the road was constructed, with multiple strands of fiber allocated per tower. Each wireless carrier has a dedicated strand of fiber to each of the towers.

The TCA and the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) partnered with AT&T and Mobilitie (a telecommunications infrastructure company) on the improvement project. TCA contracted with Mobilitie as neutral host site development company, who acted as a leasing agent for the fiber network. Telecom Plus, a contractor and system integrator, was hired by Mobilitie to install the mobile backhaul equipment in the towers. The illustrates the challenges and complexities of deploying new cell sites, and the importance of collaboration between government agencies, service providers, site development companies, system integrators and equipment manufacturers.

Another challenge was deploying a variety of mobile backhaul transport technologies, including Gigabit Ethernet, T3 circuits and multiplexed T1s. TelecomPlus selected Omnitron’s iConverter® multi-service platform of Ethernet Network Interface Devices, intelligent media converters, T1/E1 multiplexers and CWDM multiplexers for mobile backhaul connectivity.

“The iConverter platform was selected as a cost-effective solution to deliver T1s, T3s and future Ethernet to the towers for the wireless providers,” said Chris Downs, Senior Vice President of TelecomPlus. “It also gave us the flexibility to add new CWDM channels as needed for future upgrades without the need for additional fiber infrastructure which would be extremely costly. Verizon is using iConverter CWDM multiplexers for a planned, hot-switchover upgrade to 4G. AT&T Mobility is in the planning stages for a similar transition.”

Omnitron and TelecomPlus collaborated in network design and equipment configuration. Omnitron staged and pre-tested the equipment. The result was a trouble-free installation and rapid deployment.

The iConverter multi-service platform enables the delivery of TDM and Ethernet services over fiber infrastructure. The platform is widely deployed in mobile backhaul and first-mile access networks. This modular system delivers 10/100/1000 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet, T1/E1, T3/E3, as well as OC3, OC12 over dual or single fiber.

iConverter Network Interface Devices (NIDs) enable the delivery of MEF-Certified Ethernet services with advanced connectivity fault management and performance monitoring.
iConverter T1/E1 multiplexers aggregate mulitple T1/E1 circuits from copper ports and 10/100/1000 Ethernet over fiber.
iConverter CWDM multiplexers feature high port densities to expand the optical capacity of mobile backhaul, SONET, metropolitan and first-mile access networks.

The iConverter Multi-service Platform can be managed via Telnet and SNMPv3 management that can be accessed using Omnitron’s iConverter® network management software, or integrated into a telecommunications Carrier’s network management infrastructure. iConverter provides comprehensive provisioning, monitoring and fault notification tools.