Fiber Optimists

Brian Schrand, senior specialist in network engineering and construction at Cincinnati Bell, one of Clearfield’s largest customers, compares the Clearview Cassette to a Lego set. “You can build off it—and it’s pretty much future-proof,” Schrand adds.

Cincinnati Bell isn’t a typical Clearfield customer. Most are small, rural phone companies like Paul Bunyan Cooperative in Bemidji and Grand Rapids, SureWest Communications in California, Foothills Rural Telephone in Kentucky, and Matanuska Telephone in Alaska. Cincinnati Bell is the nation’s ninth-largest telcom company, with more than 800,000 access lines. But the Clearview Cassette has provided a boost for midsize telcos facing powerful competition from cable companies.

Cincinnati Bell recently began a fiber-to-the-home initiative through which it hopes to win customers in multi-dwelling units (MDUs). These potential customers are mostly young people using cell phones instead of landlines and getting high-speed connections from their cable companies. Says Schrand: “We are going to try and touch 60 percent of our operating area in the next three to five years.”

Cincinnati Bell uses multiple vendors for fiber management products, but hires Clearfield for the largest share. Last fall, Clearfield was selected for the MDU initiative. “We have found that the large, 800-pound gorilla companies—and I can’t mention names—have other clients with written contracts that can take up to half of their production at any given time,” Schrand says. “When that happens, our lead times for products can jump out to an astronomical 18 weeks. But in Clearfield’s market, we’re the 800-pound gorilla. They’re large enough to give us the capacity we need, but small enough to custom-make products specific to our needs.”

For a while, though, it wasn’t clear that there’d actually be a Clearfield to meet those needs.

A Company of Survivors

Clearfield’s origins stretch back to a Bloomington company called Americable. Earlier this decade, Beranek was Americable’s president; Hill was in sales.

“We had some early-generation, central-office fiber management products at Americable, which were the cornerstone of some great products,” she recalls. But with post-tech-bust problems in the telecom market, which were exacerbated by 9/11, Americable’s owners wanted out.

One of Americable’s competitors, Computer Systems Products, had been recently acquired by APA Enterprises, a Twin Cities research and development firm focused on ultraviolet-light detectors and precision optical lenses. Computer Systems Products competed in the local market for fiber and copper connectivity products, but it didn’t provide fiber management products. Beranek saw the potential for a successful merger, and she and others approached APA Enterprises to see if it agreed.