Wave7 Does FTTH in Illinois

ALPHARETTA, Ga. -- Wave 7 Optics and US SONET LLC today announced that 3600 homes and businesses in the Salem, IL area (approximately 60 miles east of St. Louis) soon will have access to the most advanced fiber optic network currently available for multiple telephone lines, more than 200 digital television channels, ultra high-speed Internet, advanced gaming, or other data services. US SONET recently began connecting their customers to the new network and anticipate completing the network by year’s end.

“Our business plan encompasses the city of Salem, which contains 3600 homes and businesses – and we plan to use Wave7 in all of them,” said John Andrews of US SONET. “In the process of choosing the Last Mile Link as our optical access product, we were looking for a platform technology to differentiate our selves and a technology that will grow with us. Wave7 effectively showed how their infrastructure would support everything we want to do now and in the future. HFC and DSL architectures cannot support the services we plan to offer and competing ATM-based optical systems come up short when it comes to ‘usable bandwidth’ per subscriber.”

The Last Mile Link provides up to 300 times more capacity than competing broadband systems, such as DSL or cable modem, at the same or lower installation cost. Because of the inherent high-bandwidth capabilities of fiber optics and Wave7’s unique architectural cost advantages, US SONET can provide each of their customers access speeds from 256 kbps up to a maximum of 500 Mbps “symmetrical” service, unlike typical “asymmetrical” services where download speeds far exceed “upload” speeds.

Furthermore, the Last Mile Link uses standard data, telephone and CATV interfaces as its customer premise devices to accommodate existing home and business telephone, television and computer systems, meaning customers do not have to buy new equipment to get on the new network. The system also supports current emerging technology, such as IP telephony and IP streaming.

“In addition to numerous technical advantages, our customers can deploy the Last Mile Link on a low ‘first cost’ basis and without risk of ‘stranded investments,’ as they only add equipment when they need it – not in anticipation of future connections that may not materialize,” said Tom Tighe, CEO of Wave7 Optics. “Furthermore, adding capacity in our system requires only the insertion of an additional ‘line card’ in our ‘Last Mile Core’ field unit and an extra Gigabit Ethernet optical interface in the ‘central office’ to increase bandwidth throughput capability to customers.”

Wave7 Optics Inc.