Customer Success Story:

Snapshot

Customer: Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS), Wisconsin's largest school district, serving 70,000+ students in over 140 schools
Challenge: Legacy fiber couldn't support the exponentially increasing number of in-classroom devices, prompting the need for a scalable solution
Solution: Capital Electric helped design a new cabling system using single-mode fiber (OS2) to address bandwidth limitations
Components:
- Single-mode fiber for scalability and speed
- Sumitomo T-56+ fusion splicing machines to minimize signal loss
- Pre-fabrication services from Capital Electric for efficient installation

Challenge

Because students now use Wi-Fi-enabled tablets and laptops each day – in almost every classroom – the sheer number of devices connected to the network overwhelmed legacy classroom infrastructure. Not to mention devices that staff use as well as other administrative demands on the network.

To be specific: the 100Mbs and 1Gbs systems do not support that much bandwidth demand; inadequate network capacity hindered students' access to information and educational resources.

MPS needed a bigger pipe, i.e., more bandwidth, connecting the classrooms, and all their devices, to the main servers in their head-end or cloud.

Goals

Upgrade classroom connections to eliminate bottlenecks and support the growing demand for bandwidth
Implement a future-proof solution that could scale with the times and not require constant re-cabling

Solution

Capital Electric teamed up with Rob Munger of Munger Technical Serves to design a new cabling system using single-mode (OS2) fiber which provides the ability to scale up to terabyte speeds – yes multiple terabytes.

Our workflow included the heavy use of fusion splice-on connectors and fusion splice cassettes from Sumitomo so that every strand of fiber has the lowest loss possible.

Low loss of course provides the best option for future generations of optical transceivers.

Implementation

Munger Technical Services is managing the implementation of this mammoth project along with an army of cable installers and terminators.

To make sure the tight timelines are met, Munger purchased eight Sumitomo T-56+ fusion splicers from Capital.

The new T-56+ “boasts a 6-second splice time in SM Quick Mode and 15-second heat shrink time”.

To expedite the workflow further, they also utilized our Pre-Fabrication services to increase the speed and efficiency of installations.

How?

We cut all the cables to length; Rob and his team just had to provide us with a list of cable lengths and location IDs then we cut and labeled them for each classroom.

Results

This project isn’t quite complete yet but is scheduled to be completed in September of this year. We’ll keep you updated!

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Since opening our doors in 1978, our mission has been to help you make the best decisions possible when it comes to wiring, cables and all the related systems. It’s been an honor to be part of the solution on hundreds, if not thousands, of your projects over the years…and it still feels like we’re just getting started.

Look out for more success stories in the future.