ATLANTA, Ga. -- Crawfordsville Electric Light & Power today announced that Wave7 Optics has won the network equipment bid for their new optical broadband (fiber-to-the-home) network, which has an estimated cost of $18M and is slated to begin service in 3Q 2004. CEL&P is connecting homes off an existing “backbone” fiber route installed for intramural and governmental communications.

“We began putting the plans together three years ago to offer advanced communication services to Crawfordsville because this project will help Crawfordsville compete nationally in terms of economic development, will improve the reliability and availability of communication services and give the residents of the area a choice of service providers,” said Roy E. Kaser, Manager of CEL&P.

Wave7 Optics will provide the Last Mile Core™ switching and transport system for installation in head-end and central office type facilities and in the field, the Last Mile Gateway™ for premises installations and the Last Mile Sentinel™ for network monitoring and quality assurance purposes. This will be a new network installation to deliver competitive services for high-speed Internet access (in excess of 512 Kbps) and will be one of the first in the U.S. to offer “IPTV” (Internet Protocol television).

IPTV is an innovative way of converting video and audio signals into packets and transmitting them over the IP network to subscribers. IPTV allows an unlimited number of channels to be offered when used with Wave7 Optics high-speed symmetrical network and creates a high-speed back channel, which opens the way for exciting interactive services, such as video-on-demand, interactive games and pay-per-view services.

“Our Last Mile Link system can provide IPTV services on a multicast or unicast basis to minimize resource utilization,” said Tom Tighe, CEO of Wave7 Optics. “Furthermore, remote provisioning and programming capabilities ensure that a customer’s set-top box is always up-to-date with the most recent software and program guide.”

Wave7 Optics Inc.