CDE Lightband Accelerates Small Business Growth, Deploying Calix SmartBiz in Just Six Weeks To Quickly Surpass First-Year Goals

CDE Lightband rapidly launched SmartBiz with Calix Success, surpassing first-year goals and driving small business growth by embracing best practices like dedicated teams and bundled offerings that prioritize security and reliability

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Calix, Inc. (NYSE: CALX) today announced that CDE Lightband, a municipally owned broadband service provider (BSP) in Clarksville, Tennessee, is achieving rapid success with Calix SmartBiz™ and the Calix Broadband Platform, redefining how they serve local small businesses. Supported by the simplicity of SmartBiz and a robust growth strategy, CDE Lightband is rapidly expanding their small business footprint while fueling new investment and innovation across Clarksville’s economy.

With hands-on guidance from the award-winning Calix Success organization, the CDE Lightband team deployed SmartBiz in just six weeks—quickly surpassing first-year subscriber goals and laying the foundation for continued expansion to reach at least half of existing small business subscribers.

SmartBiz, integrated for the Calix Platform, enables BSPs to deliver secure, managed Wi-Fi purpose-built for small businesses. It combines business-grade security, dedicated networks, and integrated network resiliency to simplify management for both BSPs and their small business subscribers. At ConneXions 2025, Calix introduced the most recent SmartBiz enhancements—including the GP5G plug-and-play 5G access point for automatic cellular backup and new managed switches for unified network management—fully integrated with the new agentic AI-enabled next-generation Calix Platform.

To accelerate the adoption and optimization of SmartBiz, CDE Lightband established a dedicated small business organization across sales, engineering, and support. Partnering with Calix Success, the BSP made SmartBiz a standard feature in every bundle—delivering the security and reliability small businesses demand while simplifying purchasing, driving immediate value, and strengthening their 40–45 percent market share.

The CDE Lightband business sales team helps ensure SmartBiz reaches every new small business subscriber, while standardized Calix GigaSpire® Wi-Fi system installations and Calix Service Cloud management drive faster troubleshooting, fewer truck rolls, and secure, consistent connectivity. By combining SmartBiz’s simplicity with Calix Success best practices like focused teams and a bundled offer strategy, CDE Lightband has created a scalable blueprint any BSP can replicate to accelerate small business growth.

Christy Batts, chief broadband officer at CDE Lightband, said: “Every business is different—a law office doesn’t need the same setup as a nail salon—but all of them need reliability and simplicity. SmartBiz gives us the flexibility to meet every small business subscriber where they are—whether they need simple guest Wi-Fi or a secure, isolated network to keep point-of-sale systems up and running. The support from Calix Success and Calix University made it easy for our teams to launch quickly, build confidence, and create meaningful connections with our small business subscribers. SmartBiz helps us strengthen existing relationships and serve new ones as our small business community evolves.”

Michael Weening, president and chief executive officer at Calix, said: “CDE Lightband’s success with SmartBiz is a powerful example of how quickly service providers can move beyond the trap of commoditization. With the power of the Calix Broadband Platform and our managed services model, they are differentiating through value—not price—and winning their small business market. Their deep commitment to their community shows what is possible with the right vision, leadership, and innovation partner. That is the Calix mission: to enable BSPs of all sizes to simplify operations, innovate exceptional experiences for subscribers, and grow value. The Calix Agent Workforce, announced last month at ConneXions, will further enhance the value of our platform, helping providers scale personalized subscriber experiences at an unprecedented pace. Congratulations to the entire CDE Lightband team on this success. We are proud to be their partner.”

Learn how Calix SmartBiz helps BSPs of all types win their small business markets.

About Calix

Calix, Inc. (NYSE: CALX)—Calix delivers the industry’s only agentic AI cloud and appliance-based platform, purpose-built over two decades with open standards and advanced security so service providers of all sizes can transform into experience providers. The platform combines agentic AI, intelligent appliances, and fully integrated managed services with Calix Success and a partner community to simplify operations, engagement, and service, innovate for their consumer, business, and municipal subscribers, and grow their value for members, investors, and the communities they serve.

This press release contains forward-looking statements that are based upon management’s current expectations and are inherently uncertain. Forward-looking statements are based upon information available to us as of the date of this release, and we assume no obligation to revise or update any such forward-looking statement to reflect any event or circumstance after the date of this release, except as required by law. Actual results and the timing of events could differ materially from current expectations based on risks and uncertainties affecting Calix’s business. The reader is cautioned not to rely on the forward-looking statements contained in this press release. Additional information on potential factors that could affect Calix’s results and other risks and uncertainties are detailed in its quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC and available at www.sec.gov.

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