Vibrant Broadband Chooses Ribbon’s Neptune 2100 to Future-Proof its Middle-Mile Network

How a trusted Minnesota utility co-op transformed its legacy 10G network into a 400G-ready IP-MPLS powerhouse.

Vibrant Broadband has been delivering high-speed internet to Central Minnesota since 2018, rapidly growing to over 7,000 subscribers. As residential and business data consumption surged, their legacy 10G ring-based network struggled to keep pace. To avoid a bottleneck in their infrastructure and support future growth, Vibrant Broadband urgently needed a robust network upgrade capable of delivering comprehensive Layer 3 routing at the network edge alongside significantly higher bandwidth.

To future-proof their middle-mile infrastructure, Vibrant Broadband chose Ribbon’s Neptune (NPT) 2100 to transition to a powerful, 400G-ready IP-MPLS network. Currently operating at 100G, this intelligent solution simplified their network topology by enabling highly efficient meshed nodes instead of restrictive multi-ring architectures, all while providing a massive 800 Gbps switching capacity in a compact 1RU footprint. With Ribbon's service-aware aggregation and the Muse Multi-layer Automation Platform, Vibrant Broadband can now seamlessly manage and collapse all services—including mission-critical utility SCADA traffic—onto a single, converged IP network. This streamlined upgrade not only empowered them to broaden their service offerings for diverse customers but also delivered unmatched scalability and the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) for years to come.