Salira Ships EPON Platform

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Salira Optical Network Systems, a leading provider of optical access systems, today announced First Customer Shipment (FCS) of the Salira 2000 Platform to US Signal, a debt-free regional carrier providing broadband services to business customers in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin. The Salira 2000 Platform is the industry’s first intelligent Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON) platform for Fiber-to-the-Business (FTTB) to combine support for native-mode TDM services and standards-based IP services. Following extensive testing at the company’s facilities, US Signal is deploying the Salira 2000 Platform in its network to connect customers to the fiber-optic transport that it has deployed and lit throughout the region. “Our approach to serving business customers is to identify a need and then profitably fulfill that need,” said Barry Raterink, president of US Signal. “We have an extensive long-haul network and a dense metro presence. We’re looking for ways to cost-effectively connect customers to that transport capacity. Salira’s systems deliver the right set of economics in the access portion of the network.” US Signal began the successful lab trial of the Salira 2000 Platform in May 2002 before the product was introduced at SuperComm in Atlanta, Georgia in June 2002. The Salira 2000 Platform consists of the Salira 2500, a high port-density optical line terminal, and the Salira 2300, the industry’s first multi-customer optical network unit. The Salira Access Management (SAM) system combines service creation, EMS and subscriber management in one integrated software suite. The Salira 2000 Platform leverages Ethernet’s simplicity and scalability to reduce the cost of provisioning broadband services to business customers, while providing the bandwidth capacity only available with fiber-based transport. Salira Optical Network Systems Inc.US Signal