Leviton has unveiled the Opt-X HD Fiber Enclosure System, designed to increase fiber density by as much as 50% within the same rack space. A member of the company’s Opt-X line of fiber optic connectivity products, the system includes high-density enclosures, MTP cassettes, and adapter plates.

One good cabling alliance apparently deserves another. On the heels of the announcement that Berk-Tek and Leviton have decided to join forces (see “Berk-Tek Leviton Technologies alliance targets high-performance networks”), fellow cabling and connectivity suppliers Legrand and Superior Essex Communications LP say they too will combine forces. The two companies will jointly address the international structured cabling systems (SCS) market though a new brand, called nCompass.

While Verizon has long touted operational expenditure (opex) savings as a rationale for its FiOS fiber to the home (FTTH) deployments, smaller carriers also have seen similar benefits, according to a recent study by RVA LLC for the Fiber to the Home Council Americas. Small and medium-sized carriers in North America say they’ve seen an average opex savings of 20.4% annually, the study reports.

Need some bandwidth on the go? Google Fiber said today it is offering its subscribers in Kansas City, KS, the ability to hook into its fiber-to-the-home network (FTTH) from stations attached to the utility poles on which it has strung fiber cable. Google called it “fiber to the pole.” Of course, today is April Fool's Day, so it is a limited-time offer.

AFL has introduced North America to the Fujikura 70S fusion splicer, which it says it the second of five new products that will be introduced this year. The 70S shares many features with the existing FSM-60S model fusion splicer, but offers much faster splicing in the field and new easy-to-use features, the company claims.

Fiber-optic training specialist The Light Brigade, a division of AFL, will collaborate with Singapore’s Fujikura Asia and The Institute of Technical Education (ITE) College West to create a fiber-optic resource center at the college. The center will offer training materials on fiber optics as well as a showcase devoted to fiber to the home (FTTH). Combined with industrial placement at Fujikura Asia, the center will allow students at ITE to gain knowledge and skills relevant to the fiber-optics industry.

United Technologists Europe Ltd. (UTEL) says it has completed the design, manufacture, and delivery of equipment to retrofit the fiber to the home (FTTH) network in the 14 districts of the city of Pau, France. The network serves more than 55,000 customers and 140 sites through a combination of point-to-point and GPON topologies.

Corning Inc. has released the latest addition to its family of singlemode optical fibers, Corning SMF-28 Ultra fiber. The fiber and cable maker says the new, premium singlemode optical fiber is the first in the market to combine the benefits of very low attenuation and improved macrobend performance in the same fiber (see “Bend matters, Part 1: A look at macrobending”).

Vodafone Spain and Orange have agreed to co-invest in deploying fiber to the home (FTTH) networks in Spain. The resulting fiber-optic networks will reach 6 million premises in 50 cities by September 2017 at a price of €1 billion, the carriers assert.

ADTRAN, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADTN) says it has been selected by Medicine Park Telephone to provide broadband equipment for the operator’s broadband stimulus-funded, fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network. The FTTH network will deliver high-speed broadband services to remote communities in Oklahoma.

BT is launching a major new recruitment drive as its £2.5 billion investment in fiber-optic broadband starts to accelerate. More than 1000 engineering jobs are being created at the company’s Openreach business, with most of the new recruits set to install broadband in customers’ homes. The new jobs are in addition to the 1500 extra engineers recruited during the past year.

Clearfield Inc. (NASDAQ:CLFD) says its FieldShield Fiber Delivery and Protection System enables network operators to deploy fiber-optic cable into areas that had proved unreachable with conventional approaches. The FieldShield family, which includes such novel elements as pushable fiber, will address applications in both the outside plant as well as within enterprises and data centers.

An ambitious and unusual project is being undertaken in the UK to bring superfast broadband to a remote community. Fiber-optic cables that have remained unused on the seabed of the Atlantic Ocean for about three years are to be diverted to the Isles of Scilly, off the southwest tip of Cornwall, as part of a £3.7 million scheme to give the islanders the fastest broadband speeds.

The Fiber to the Home Council Americas has filed comments with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in which it urged the Commission to support the efforts of carriers such as Verizon to replace their copper infrastructures with fiber to the home (FTTH).

Sales of PON optical line terminals (OLTs) for FTTx networks dropped in 2012, according to Ovum’s recently published Market Share Report: 2012 FTTx, DSL, and CMTS units. A slowing of EPON sales in major Asian markets was to blame, according to the market research firm.

ADTRAN, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADTN) reveals that it has supplied its Total Access broadband platform OmniTel Communications for the service provider’s fiber to the home (FTTH) network roll out. OmniTel is deploying the network as part of an Iowa Broadband Deployment Governance board project that is using a broadband stimulus grant from the Rural Utilities Service to provide broadband services to more than 7000 subscribers in rural areas of the state.

Shortly before the FTTH Council Europe's 2013 conference in London February 19–21, Lightwave European correspondent Kurt Ruderman asked ...

After showing it off at last fall’s SCTE Cable-Tec Expo, CommScope has announced the official commercial launch of its E2O (Electrical to Optical) hybrid cabling system. The cabling system combines optical fiber with coax to meet the needs of cable MSOs who are still relying on coax, but know they’ll need fiber deeper in their networks in the future.

Huawei Technologies Co Ltd. launched what it claims is the industry's first intelligent optical splitter for passive optical networks (PON) at the FTTH Conference in London last week. With this new optical splitter, operators can automatically identify and generation topological maps of the optical distribution network (ODN) for fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) networks, the company says.

ZyXEL Communications Corp., a provider of secure broadband connectivity products, has launched the SBG3300 business broadband gateway with 4G/LTE backup at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. The high-speed VDSL2 router offers best-in-class security features, including certification from the Virtual Private Network Consortium (VPNC), making it an ideal option for telecommuters and satellite offices, the company claims.

Little more than a week and a half after the European Union voted February 8 to slash funding to support broadband networks across the continent (see “European Union slashes broadband funding”), France has stepped up to help fill the gap. French President Francois Hollande outlined a program that will see 20 billion euros ($27 billion) spent over the next 10 years to install new broadband networks – potentially including fiber to the home (FTTH) or fiber to the cabinet (FTTC) – in his country.

Zhone Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: ZHNE) has expanded its indoor GPON optical network terminal (ONT) line to include the zNid 2301, which was released at the FTTH Conference 2013 in London last week. Created for residential and small business services, the zNID 2301 GPON ONT provides many features, including high quality voice and data services and multicast video support, in what the company claims is the smallest available form factor on the market.

Swiss company Huber+Suhner AG says its new fiber-optic connector will double the density of optical fibers per rack and improve fiber handling in central offices and data centers. Launched at the FTTH Conference 2013 in London, the new connector is designed to significantly reduce space requirements, helping to control costs and improve efficiency.