The leading edge Powerline suite of products, in conjunction with First Communications’ consulting and integration services, was installed to bring Internet broadband services to a student housing building at Columbia College in Chicago.

Built in 1915, the building is a heritage site, which had been constructed to serve the purposes of an industrial printing company. Today, each of the eight residential floors is occupied by 15 rooms, housing a total of 357 students. DSL had been purchased individually by some of the student residents, while yet others used cable modems where available.

After a site assessment, network configuration design, and product installation, First Communications of Akron, Ohio, installed 15 MDU Gateways, 357 AV200 Enterprise Powerline Wall Mounts for individual access to the broadband services, 357 VoIP access terminals, 100 First Communications Media Converters, a PC-based access point for the remote IP management of the deployed equipment, and a third party router. The installation was completed within three weeks.

Students now have high-speed access to the Internet for data services, voice and SMATV (Satellite Master Antenna Television). Each student is provided with a minimum of 3 Mbps of bi-directional bandwidth to the Internet for data services, local and long distance telephone voice services (VoIP) and 30 assessable TV stations.

The derived benefits to the Columbia College were the swiftness of the technology deployment, services that will allow for greater mobility and ubiquitous access capability for students within the building, physically transferable technology investment in comparison to structure enhancing cabling project, and significant network security to the end-users.

Columbia College selected this solution also based upon the economics of serving triple-play bandwidth access, and the mitigation of environmental issues such as the exposure to heritage building materials like asbestos.