FiberZone Ships AFM-360

BETHESDA, Md. -- FiberZone Networks Inc. announced the general availability (GA) of the AFM-360, the first Automated Fiber Management (AFM) product to deliver remote control and automation to the fiber infrastructure while maintaining the attributes and reliability of a manual patch panel. The first sales and several deliveries of the AFM360 were made to large carriers in Asia and the US. These deliveries followed an extended field trial in which another major carrier successfully transmitted the first live traffic over FiberZone AFM in an active central office.

“The readiness to install our system in a live facility confirms the stringent standards to which the AFM-360 has been developed,” said Joe Teixeira, VP Product Management, FiberZone Networks. “As much as network operators crave the benefits of automation, they absolutely insist on retaining the basic reliability and performance characteristics of manual connectivity. Specifically they want very low optical loss, to avoid having to re-engineer the network for a higher power budget. In addition, connections must be passively latched, so that they are not dependent on power, battery back-up, or any active component to maintain connectivity. Finally, they prefer a physical coupling of fibers, which ensures complete signal transparency with no degradation.”

FiberZone Networks