Wabash Taps Mimosa's Fiber-Fast Wireless Solution to Deliver Ultra Broadband

Mimosa Networks has announced that Wabash Communications has selected the company’s wireless broadband solutions for a network-wide upgrade.

With over 6,000 subscribers, the Ohio-based company is augmenting its network with Mimosa’s backhaul, access and client devices to address increasing broadband demands and opportunities from its customers.

Wabash Communications, along with its parent company, Wabash Mutual Telephone Company, offers voice, video, data and business service solutions to its customers, with internet packages ranging from 2 Mbps to 1 Gbps, delivered via fiber or fixed wireless depending on the subscriber’s location. Seeing increasing demand for its internet packages, Wabash initially deployed an alternative solution using LTE equipment in the 3.65 GHz band.  But with only 50 megahertz of available spectrum, there was not enough available capacity to support their fixed wireless subscribers with sufficient bandwidth.

Ultimately, Wabash needed a solution that could quickly expand the capacity of its existing network to deliver true broadband service. After testing competitive vendors, Wabash selected Mimosa’s fiber-fast 5 GHz wireless solutions to deploy on its towers in and around Celina, Ohio. Operating seamlessly in conjunction with its legacy equipment, Wabash now uses Mimosa to provision its fastest line of sight subscribers and to handle offloaded traffic.

“We were looking to leverage our existing tower assets to extend broadband services to our service area,” said Mike Boley, President and CEO of Wabash. “Because of the reliability, ease-of-use and capacity of the Mimosa solutions, we felt confident adding them to our existing tower deployments. We are thrilled with the speeds we are seeing and can now offer true broadband services to all of our customers.”

Wabash has deployed Mimosa’s portfolio of B5 backhaul radios, A5 access devices and C5 client devices in its network and expects to expand its Mimosa deployments across most of its towers by year-end. As the initial tower installations increased in number, Wabash embraced Mimosa’s cloud-based Design Tool which handles complex network designs and provides more detailed and accurate results for the coverage area.

“We were looking for a solution that could be rapidly deployed, provide a superior broadband experience and be installed with an ROI of less than 12 months on our CAPEX investment,” said Travis Schlater, Network Technician. “By utilizing Mimosa’s latest 2.4 firmware, we were able to significantly decrease our overall installation time. Combining the Mimosa Install App with the Auto Unlock/ Auto Provisioning feature further simplified our deployment, as did integration with our RADIUS and accounting servers. We have also been thoroughly impressed with the responsiveness from the Sales and Customer Support Teams and can honestly say Mimosa checked all our boxes."

Wabash customers now enjoy sufficient bandwidth to accommodate both online gaming and video streaming for residential customers, and high-speed business applications, including those of local farmers and small businesses in the area. “With Mimosa, we have seen an increase in speeds, setting the path for future higher speed offerings,” said Boley. “The increased speeds our customers are now seeing are improving their quality of life and making critical improvements to their business operations.”

According to John Colvin, Mimosa’s SVP of Global Field Operations, “Fixed wireless is rapidly becoming the solution of choice for delivering ultra-broadband services to the rural communities of many traditional telephone companies. We are thrilled to see customers like Wabash make a strategic decision by selecting Mimosa’s fiber-fast solutions to expand their network capabilities and better serve their customers. Mimosa will be another tool in the toolkit, allowing Wabash to rapidly scale to deliver the ultimate internet experience to their subscribers.”