4 September 2003 Minneapolis, MN Lightwave -- Optical Solutions Inc. has announced the closing of its Series III financing, which raised a total of $15 million. Existing investors Sprout Group, St. Paul Venture Capital, Boston Millennia Partners, Coral Ventures, Intel Capital, and Menlo Ventures participated in the round. Cisco Systems Inc. also joined the Series III financing as a new corporate investor.

"We are delighted with the continued investment in Optical Solutions," asserts chief financial officer James Stewart of Optical Solutions. "This new financing will enhance our leadership in broadband access and help us meet the increasingly strong demand for our FiberPath Fiber-to-the-Premises (FTTP) systems throughout North America."

Optical Solutions recently announced its new ITU-T standards-compliant FiberPath 500 FTTP system, built on technology that enables service providers to deploy networks using either BPON (ITU G.983, 622 Mbits/sec downstream/155 Mbits/sec upstream) or GPON (ITU G.984, 1.2 Gbits/sec downstream/622 Mbits/sec upstream) network protocols. The network protocol is software selectable, which helps service providers build more flexible broadband passive optical networks without stranding capital.