EXFO intros PON Power Meter for FTTP deployments

June 17, 2004 Quebec City, Canada -- EXFO Electro-Optical Engineering Inc. today announced the introduction of the PPM-350 Passive Optical Network (PON) Power Meter for fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) installation, maintenance, and service-activation requirements.The PPM-350 PON Power Meter, the latest in a suite of EXFO solutions specifically designed for FTTP testing, distinctively measures the optical power of voice, data, and video signals simultaneously via a patent-pending approach, say company representatives.The handheld instrument can determine the power of different signal types, including continuous (e.g., TV signal at 1550 nm) and framed (e.g., ATM or Ethernet at 1490 nm or 1310 nm). Various baud rates are covered, ranging from 155 Mbits/sec to 2.5 Gbits/sec, for both synchronous and non-synchronous signals. According to �tienne Gagnon, EXFO's vice president of Physical-Layer Product Management, "reaching out to customers through an innovative solution that stresses ease of use without sacrificing accuracy and productivity. Based on user-selected thresholds, three light-emitting diodes (LEDs) provide straightforward pass-fail, color-coded information about the corresponding PON signals with respective power values appearing on a screen."The PPM-350 PON Power Meter will be showcased at booth 10602 during SuperComm 2004, to be held June 22-24, at McCormick Place in Chicago.