Clearfield Lands Kansas FTTH Project

MINNEAPOLIS, July 22, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Home Communications, Inc. (HCI) is a telecommunications trailblazer in Kansas. So when HCI recently launched a Fiber to the Home (FTTH) project -- partially financed with broadband stimulus funding under the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act -- the company knew it needed a reliable fiber management partner. Clearfield, Inc. (Nasdaq:CLFD), which had worked with HCI on previous projects, will assist in managing the more than 600 miles of fiber to be deployed to all of HCI's exchanges throughout nine cities, and ultimately serving approximately 1,800 homes.

HCI Chief Technology Officer Richard Baldwin said the FTTH deployment was critical to provide area businesses and residents with the latest telecommunication advancements, such as high speed internet and internet protocol television (IPTV) with high definition channels. Clearfield's FieldSmart Fiber Crossover Distribution System (FxDS) panels will be used in HCI's central office with strategically-placed Fiber Scalability Center (FSC) PON cabinets equipped with Clearfield optical component splitting technology in the field.

Baldwin cited several criteria for selecting Clearfield's products, including ease of access, customer turn-up efficiency, cost effectiveness and overall cleanliness of deployment. "When you look at fiber panels with no fiber jumpers, initially it's hard to determine which product is better," he said. "After you run the fiber jumpers, it doesn't take long to determine where manufacturing flaws exist. The fiber management design in the FieldSmart cabinet is far superior to others. Fiber jumpers stay organized and easy to manage from the first jumper to the last."

Clearfield Inc. (Nasdaq: CLFD)