On November 10, 2026, Schurz Broadband Group ( SBG ) announced that its corporate network infrastructure will undergo a major upgrade, with the deployment of Cisco's new generation of 8000 series routing platforms.
SBG is the fiber-optic broadband business unit under the family enterprise Schurz Communications Inc. The company stated that its operating subsidiaries, Antietam Broadband (Maryland), Long Lines (Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota), NKTelco (Ohio), and Orbitel Communications (Arizona), will uniformly adopt the compact Cisco 8712 platform and will be interconnected through new shared peer-to-peer interconnection points (POP).
According to SBG, this initiative will provide a modern, automated, and standards-based architecture for its residential, corporate, and wholesale businesses, supporting faster deployment, higher security, and more flexible capabilities, all offered under the company's Flight Fiber brand.
SBG indicates that the company is advancing with the Flight fiber optic network to meet scalable industry standards and support differentiated, low-latency services, providing a pathway for the next wave of applications and traffic driven by AI.
The Cisco 8712 features high port density and enables complete internet routing peering connections within an efficient 2RU chassis; compared to its predecessor, the cabinet-based platform it replaces, it occupies only a fraction of the space. This density can be directly translated into lower power consumption, as well as reduced requirements for data center space and cooling, thereby freeing up capacity for growth and lowering costs.
As part of this upgrade, Antietam Broadband, Long Lines, NKTelco, and Orbitel Communications will phase out their old platforms in favor of more flexible and reliable architectures. The new design will be capable of loading a complete internet routing table within a minute, providing the necessary response speed and redundancy for rapid service activation and stable operation of the network.
For the full press release, please see here.
