June 5, 2006 Atlanta, GA -- Dumont Telephone Company has selected Hitachi Telecom's AMN1220 Gigabit Passive Optical Networking (GPON) platform for the delivery of triple-play services in the city of Dumont, IA, and surrounding areas. Part of a seven-year plan by Dumont Telephone to provide fiber-optic connectivity throughout the company's service area, the initial deployment will begin this month, with about 100 subscribers in the city of Dumont. Future deployments will include the delivery of residential and business services to the surrounding rural areas as well.
"We are pleased to be able to provide world-class communications services to our subscribers, today and in the future," reports Roger Kregel, Dumont Telephone General Manager. "Hitachi's AMN1220 GPON system gives us the bandwidth we will need for future services such as high-definition TV, as well as the ability to deliver our current cable TV services over fiber-optic cable."
"Hitachi is pleased to be selected by Dumont Telephone to provide our AMN1220 product family for their GPON project," adds Frank Banks, Hitachi Telecom vice president of sales. "We expect that Dumont will be among the first cities in the United States to offer commercial services based on full-rate GPON technology."
Dumont Telephone Company has 1,500 access lines and provides voice, video, and data to the communities and surrounding areas of Dumont and Allison. The company also provides video in Bristow and Geneva and operates a PCS Wireless business that services the communities of Dumont, Allison, Aplington, Parkersburg, and New Hartford. The company operates under the direction of a seven-member board of directors and eight employees.
The AMN1220 GPON FTTP family provides ultra-high-bandwidth communication services to residential, business, and institutional subscribers using a single optical fiber direct to the subscriber's premises. Compliant with ITU-T G.984 standards, the AMN1220 provides data rates of 2.488 Gbits/sec downstream and 1.244 Gbits/sec upstream. Standards compliance provides assurance that service providers will have maximum flexibility in implementing FTTP as applications and services are added in the future, say Hitachi representatives. Legacy TDM services such as T1 are seamlessly handled in their native formats using GPON Encapsulation Mode (GEM) framing.
The AMN1220 consists of a centrally located optical line terminal (OLT) connected via singlemode fiber to optical network terminals (ONT) at the subscribers' premises. The OLT is equipped with a hybrid Layer 2/3 + TDM switch fabric for flexible traffic management and consolidation. ONTs include the GST, a single family/small business unit, and the GMT, a configurable multi-dwelling/multi-business ONT. All ONTs can provide a Gigabit Ethernet line rate interface to the subscriber.
"Light up Bandon"
In a related announcement, Hitachi Telecom also has confirmed that its AMN1220 is currently being used to turn up video, data, and voice services in Bandon, OR. The Bandon network will be formally inaugurated in a public "Light Up Bandon" ceremony on June 21. ComSpan Bandon Networks, a joint venture of ComSpanUSA and Ledcor Technical Services (LTS), has deployed the network.
"We chose to implement standard cable TV services, or RF video, for basic video services, plus IPTV for enhanced services such as Video-on-Demand," explains Dean Coons, senior vice president and chief operating officer of LTS. "The ability of Hitachi's GPON system to provide the RF video overlay in addition to the bandwidth to support multiple high-definition IPTV channels is key to the success of the network," he adds.
Take rates will not be disclosed until the June 21st event. However, John Stadter, CEO of ComSpanUSA, notes that the penetration rate has exceeded expectations. "We have been extremely pleased with the acceptance of this new technology by the citizens of Bandon," he says. "The subscribers who are already online are extremely satisfied with the performance and mix of services."