Industry struggles to define ‘middle mile’ even though it’s critical to BEAD

Middle-mile may have become more important than ever in terms of fiber networks because all the last-mile networks that will be built for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program need to connect to something. But honing-in on a precise definition of middle-mile is a challenge even for industry insiders. Joe Pellegrini, president and COO with Great Plains Communications, said, “It’s an end-to-end system with real estate, points of presence…. There’s the power requirements, generators.” Pellegrini said Great Plains wants to monetize its 19,000 route miles of fiber any way it can. That can include fiber-to-the-home, fiber-to-the-cell-tower and fiber to enterprises and data centers. Pellegrini said there’s a lot of opportunity with tower companies in rural areas because they’re trying to remove their legacy microwave backhaul and replace it with fiber.