ICN completes Southwest Iowa upgrade

The Iowa Communications Network (ICN), the state-owned, fiber optic infrastructure, announces it has completed a recent technology upgrade to the southern tier of the State.
From Council Bluffs to Burlington, the border-to-border upgrades enhance equipment at 12 sites to pure-10Gb connections, which protects the critical infrastructure to support redundancy and rising bandwidth demands for our public safety, healthcare, government, and education users.
ICN’s engineering team upgraded the 12 aggregation sites in segments, completing the 278 miles using a “daisy-chain” approach. Site-by-site, equipment supporting a pure-10Gb connection was configured and deployed with the new technology. The upgrades took place at multiple network aggregation sites in rural Iowa, including Glenwood, Red Oak, and Corning.
The equipment hardware is being upgraded from 24x1Gb connections to 24x10Gb connections as part of a broader network upgrade that will affect 156 aggregation locations. This upgrade is an example of network improvements required to enhance customer experiences and protect the critical infrastructure for the capacity demands for future advancements, like the previously completed 100Gb core upgrade.
In June 2022, ICN began rolling out this network upgrade for a 10Gb converged aggregation network across the state, utilizing its 3,400 miles of owned fiber optic infrastructure.
Equipment deployed at the sites will allow for ethernet and IP services to pass through the network on a redundant and resilient infrastructure.
To date, ICN has successfully installed the new aggregation equipment at 62 locations. Additionally, there are 15 more sites where installations are underway at different stages. Looking forward, there are plans to upgrade approximately 79 more sites.