OFS' optical fiber cabling system quadruples reach of FTTP deployment to 40+ km

May 25, 2004 Nocross, GA -- Fiber and cable supplier OFS announced today that its low loss Access ADVANTAGE system, featuring AllWave zero water peak fiber, has enabled over four times the rated reach of the active equipment in a fiber-to-the premises (FTTP) deployment. Using low cost equipment, the Douglas County School System, located 22-mi west of Atlanta, was able to achieve over four times the equipment's rated 10-km reach and avoid the need for more expensive optical transmission devices.

The extended reach can allow carriers to significantly broaden network coverage to serve many more subscribers from each active node while also avoiding the need for expensive transmission systems and exotic high power fibers.

"Thanks to AllWave fiber and the Access ADVANTAGE system, our optical loss is unbelievably low," said Lee Christianson, the senior project manager for the school district. "Though the much less expensive equipment is only rated to go a maximum of 10 km on a conventional fiber and cabling system, with the AllWave fiber and Access ADVANTAGE system we went 7 km, then 14 km, then 21 km, and then out to 42 km. And it was still going when we stopped testing because we didn't need to go beyond 40 km."

These results were achieved using OFS' backward compatible AllWave fiber that avoids the need to add a new fiber type to carrier networks and inventory; the use of expensive, high power equipment; and the complications from splicing together fibers with different characteristics.

In addition to extending the reach and lowering the cost of point-to-point Ethernet networks such as those used for Douglas County, the Access ADVANTAGE system can also save over $200 per subscriber by using low power to deliver high quality analog video, compared to high power analog video systems that require special high power fibers.

"AllWave fiber...buys us the full 16 CWDM channels, adding 50% more bandwidth, so for us, bandwidth is not an issue," stated Lee Christianson.

OFS created the Access ADVANTAGE system using AllWave full spectrum fiber, low loss LC or SC connectors, low loss splitters, and bend-loss insensitive Blue Tiger jumpers. The Access ADVANTAGE system is an end-to-end FTTP optical fiber cabling system that enables passive optical networks, point-to-point and mixed architecture networks, for analog and digital voice, data and video applications.