Case Study: LiveAir Networks achieves gigabit rural broadband and scalable carrier-grade networking with Brocade

Regional Service Provider Innovating High-Quality, High-Speed Network Services to Rural Texas

LiveAir Networks, founded in 2004 in Smithville, Texas, set out to solve the chronic lack of high-quality Internet in rural areas where major carriers wouldn’t invest. The challenge was to build a carrier-class, easily manageable and cost-effective network that could deliver bandwidth-intensive services (video, VoIP, Gigabit Ethernet) and scale without the resources of a large operator.

LiveAir built a 660-mile DWDM fiber ring called the TexasBone (10 fiber POPs plus a 60-node microwave overlay), deployed Brocade MLXe core routers, NetIron CER edge routers and Brocade Vyatta vRouters, and used small, low-cost POPs to expand fast. The result: affordable 50 Mbps–1 Gbps residential and business services ($35–$75/mo), 45,000 users and 30–50 new customers per month, simplified cloud and VPN offerings, and a future-proof platform that can scale to 40–100 GbE.

LiveAir Networks

James Breeden

Chief Executive Officer, LiveAir