Infinera Scores With Virginia

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Bristol Virginia Utilities (BVU) has selected Infinera (Nasdaq: INFN) for the metro optical network that supports its broadband service for Bristol Virginia, Abingdon, and surrounding areas in southwest Virginia. BVU is one of the few public utilities in the U.S. that has built a fiber-to-the-premises network offering the triple-play of telephone, television, and broadband Internet services. The city of Bristol, Virginia was recently named one of the Top Seven “most intelligent communities” worldwide by the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF), an independent think tank that studies economic and social developments for the 21st century.

BVU is a 64-year-old, city-owned utility that provides electricity, water, fiber-optic broadband services, to a 125 square mile area including the city of Bristol. It began to offer a fiber-based triple-play package in 2003, in order to provide all its residents with a high-speed broadband option, and to use advanced communications services to lure more industry to the region. The network includes a 250 mile fiber backbone. Consumers can choose from a menu of high-speed broadband services that range from 2 Megabits per second (Mbps) up to 16 Mbps. Business customers can purchase multi-Gigabit services including Internet, transparent LAN, and high capacity local access loops.

BVU selected Infinera for the speed, flexibility, and scalability of Infinera’s digital architecture. With consistent bandwidth growth, BVU needed a system that could respond quickly to spikes in demand and customer growth. Infinera’s digital architecture, based on Infinera’s large-scale photonic integrated circuits (PICs), enables the network to add large chunks of capacity quickly and easily. The operating costs of the Infinera network are low because Infinera’s IQ™ network operating system uses advanced software intelligence to configure and provision wavelengths and set up circuits. In addition, Infinera’s Digital ROADM architecture enables the network to be reconfigured in software in response to changing traffic patterns. Traditional all-optical ROADMs often require manual reconfiguration or equipment changes (“truck rolls”) to support a new configuration.

“Infinera’s simplicity, flexibility, and raw capacity have played an important role in the services we offer our customers. It has been very valuable in helping us deliver services to existing commercial customers, and compete effectively for economic development projects within the state of Virginia,” said Mark Lane, BVU’s Chief Technical Officer.

Infinera Corp. (Nasdaq: INFN)