OTTAWA -- BTI Photonic Systems Inc., a global supplier of WDM optical networking solutions for the build-out of new broadband services at the Metro Edge, announced today the availability of its environmentally hardened Netstender 1020 platform for outside plant cabinet environments. The addition of a hardened Netstender product brings the company's WDM Metro Edge photonic layer approach to the outside plant delivering superior economics for optical backhaul of large bandwidth capacity applications including IPTV, 3G wireless data, WiMax, and FTTx.

Cost effective optical connectivity - WDM for outside plant environments. BTI's Netstender family provides thin route WDM for cost effective deployment in both regional and Metro Edge applications. Certified for the extremes of temperature and humidity in outside plant enclosures, BTI's 1U Netstender 1020 takes the optical edge to feeder and access networks. The Netstender 1020 in addition to its CO capabilities for CWDM and DWDM now supports CWDM passive applications including multiplexing and optical add-drop across an extended temperature range of -40C to +65C.

The extended operating range for the Netstender 1020 expands the Netstender family to deliver optical connectivity to outside plant environments for today's high bit-rate applications, 3G, IPTV, WiMax, wireless data, and FTTx, explains Glenn Thurston, VP Marketing, BTI. "Cable companies, wireless carriers and telcos are now scaling up their new high speed service offerings which require anywhere from four to ten times their current bandwidth capacity at the network edge," said Thurston. "For a wireless carrier today between 6% and 10% of their operating budgets are focused on lease costs for backhaul. Increasing capacity four to ten times with the current architecture forces a reevaluation of backhaul costs and carriers are moving to WDM in the outside plant network for fiber relief and cost effective backhaul coupled with traffic aggregation schemes of either Micro-MSPP's or Pseudo wire."

BTI Systems Inc.