September 19, 2005 Atlanta, GA -- Hitachi Telecom's AMN1200 FTTP system has been accepted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service (RUS) for deployment under the Rural Broadband Access Loan and Loan Guarantee Program. The FTTP system was included on the RUS List of Acceptable Materials in category "ae," access equipment, as of July 28, 2005. According to Hitachi, this listing allows broadband service providers serving communities of up to 20,000 inhabitants to install the FTTP platform using funding obtained under the RUS program. The platform also meets RUS "Buy American" requirements.
As defined by the USDA, the RUS Rural Broadband Access Loan and Loan Guarantee Program is designed to ensure that rural consumers enjoy the same quality and range of telecommunications services that are available in urban and suburban communities. On March 4, 2005, RUS announced funding availability in fiscal year 2005, of "no less than $2.157 billion in loans, including $2.032 billion for direct cost-of-money loans, $46 million for direct 4-percent loans, and $79 million for loan guarantees."
"Hitachi's FTTP solutions are designed to be economical to deploy, reliable in operation, and to offer performance that will support the high-bandwidth applications of the future," comments David Foote, CTO of Hitachi Telecom. "In addition, because we build our products to ITU-T standards, service providers can be confident that their investments are technologically sound for the long haul. Now, the combination of RUS funding and Hitachi FTTP technology will be a major benefit to smaller communities."
The company says its AMN1200 FTTP platform is a family of products that provides ultra high bandwidth communication services to residential, business, and institutional subscribers using a single optical fiber extended directly to the subscriber's premises.