Case Studies

The partnership between LiveOak and UCL Swift does more than just connect homes. It streamlines the entire business model.

LiveOak Fiber isn’t just building a network; they are building it to last.

Based in Niceville, Florida, the challenger ISP has committed to a building a 100% underground fiber network across Florida and Georgia. The goal is lofty, but reality sets quicker than concrete.

While buried cable offers superior reliability and weather resistance, it presents a unique set of logistical hurdles—particularly at the “final mile” drop where efficiency often goes to die.

The industry standard has long relied on pre-terminated cable assemblies, but in a distributed split system.

These “one-size-fits-all” solutions create a “slack” problem. Technicians often found themselves stuffing excess cable into small underground “flowerpot” enclosures. This forced LiveOak to inventory dozens of different cable lengths, leading to waste and warehouse headaches. If a tech ran out of a specific length, the deployment ground to a halt.

To solve this, LiveOak transitioned to a “cut-to-length” strategy powered by UCL Swift North America.

By utilizing the KF4A-HDC All-In-One fusion splicer and UCL Swift’s 8145 flat drop cables, technicians now pull the exact length of cable needed for each unique residence—averaging 300 feet—and splice on the connectors in the field.

“We like the 8145 flat drop cable from UCL Swift because it is easy to prep and is very robust,” says John Lampo, Manager of Field Services for LiveOak. “We’ve tried other brands of drop cables, and they just didn’t meet our needs.”

By terminating the cable on-site, LiveOak eliminated cable waste and moved to smaller, more cost-effective underground enclosures.
Beyond the hardware, the shift optimized LiveOak’s most valuable resource: its workforce.

The KF4A-HDC is so intuitive that Tim Moore, Director of Service Provider Markets for UCL Swift, notes a novice can master the device and work independently in less than an hour. This ease of use allowed LiveOak to develop an immersive training program that puts new technicians—including a growing number of female fiber techs—into the field in less than two weeks.

In a B2B landscape where “time to market” is the ultimate metric, the partnership between LiveOak and UCL Swift proves that the right implementation approach does more than just connect homes—it streamlines the entire business model.

By combining ruggedized, direct-bury technology with a simplified field-termination process, LiveOak is proving that the path to 2026 success is buried deep.

This content was made possible by UCL Swift North America.

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