50G PON Demonstrated In Sac and Fox Nation

Fiber’s ability to economically deliver ever-increasing broadband speeds anywhere in the country over existing plant continues, with Oklahoma service provider Centranet becoming the first service provider to connect a pilot 50G connection in a Tribal nation. The first live commercial trial of 50G PON in a rural setting on indigenous lands may appear symbolic today but has practical applications in closing the digital divide and unlocking new productivity in rural and tribal communities.

“We pursued this grant to enhance the availability and the viability for our tribal members to access fiber optic opportunities, not just now, but in the future,” said Randle Carter, Principal Chief, Sac and Fox Nation in the October 8, 2024, press release announcing the technology demonstration. 

A subsidiary of Central Rural Electric Cooperative launched in 2020, Centranet has deployed 3,300 miles of fiber across north-central Oklahoma in the past three years. Its service area covers approximately 2,000 square miles and includes parts of seven counties in Oklahoma, delivering electricity to more than 20,000 meters with more than 4,000 miles of electrical line. 

“Bringing high-speed broadband to the Sac and Fox Nation, as well as other tribes and underserved areas has been a priority for us,” said Mark Prather, President of Fiber and Technology, Centranet. “This project is about more than just technology—it’s about ensuring that everyone in our community has the tools and opportunities they need to thrive in today’s digital world.”

The live trial uses Nokia’s Lightspan MF fiber solution, a future-proof platform designed to support 10, 25, and 50 Gbps PON speeds today and 100 Gbps speeds when they become available. Nokia launched its 25G symmetrical PON solution four years ago, detailing a roadmap to 50G and 100G PON speeds as technologies matured and become affordable for the marketplace. 

High-speed PON demonstrations have been booming over the past year. In April, Nokia showcased 10G, 25G, 50G, and100G speeds in Australia on NBN’s network, showing how service providers can mix and match broadband speeds over existing production networks. Closer to home, Nokia and GFiber announced live network trials of 50G speeds across its network at the beginning of July, followed by Frontier and Nokia announcing 100G PON speeds at the end of that month. 

“We wanted to show rural electric coops and rural operators in general are at the top of the game,” said Sachin Gupta, Centranet’s Vice President of Business & Technology Strategies. “We do leading edge technology.” The demonstration utilized existing fiber without any changes to the physical plant and drop-in electronics at the central office and customer CPE. 

While 50Gbps sounds colossal in today’s environment, Gupta noted that bandwidth per person growth projections range between 1 to 10 Gbps per person in the next few years, so a household of four people would conceivably need 40 Gbps. On the business side of the equation, 5G services already specify 20 Gbps peak download rates while a midsized farm leveraging precision agriculture technology could easily generate terabytes of data per day for analysis and automated vehicle monitoring.

“We did not know our highway systems would be used by Amazon to deliver products to people’s houses when we built it,” Gupta said. “If we did not have the highways, Amazon would not be one of the largest distributors of physical products in the world. We do not know what the applications of the technology will be in in four years, but these applications will be driven by the infrastructure we lay down today.”