Optical Solutions Inc. (www.opticalsolutions.com) came out with the latest edition of its FiberPath fiber-to-the-home/business solution and its network management system the FiberPath Director at SUPERCOMM 2001 in Atlanta yesterday.
The FiberPath 400 offers up to 100 megabits per second (Mbps) of bandwidth per user, while previous versions of the product offered 10 Mbps.
Optical Solutions already has existing versions of FiberPath installed to 5,000 homes in North America in smaller carriers' networks.
The FiberPath products offer multiple phone lines, 80 analog and hundreds of digital cable TV channels and now a 100BaseT connection (previous versions were 10BaseT). The system is an "FSAN derivative," says Darryl Ponder, CEO and chairman.
FSAN stands for The Full Service Access Network (www.fsanet.net), an industry group that's defined an ATM-based version of passive optical networking (PON) to support 150 Mbps of capacity and is working on a 622 Mbps standard.
Interest in fiber-to-the-user and PON has been revived recently as vendors and carriers such as SBC Communications Inc. (www.sbc.com) have announced that these technologies have matured - meaning prices have dropped - more quickly than expected.
"Fiber-to-the-home in the past cost too much," Ponder says. "With the 400 we're lower cost than HFC."
He says the FiberPath 400 costs $1,000 per home passed for the infrastructure and $1,000 per subscriber for electronics. That means that capital expenditure costs of FiberPath are at parity with hybrid fiber/coax while maintenance costs of fiber are lower than maintaining a copper-based or HFC network.
During SUPERCOMM 2001, Optical Solutions connected via a fast Ethernet link to Microsoft Corp.'s (www.microsoft.com) booth, where the Redmond, Wash., company ran video and music on demand.
Microsoft also was in Optical Solutions' booth showing movies using XP, a new operating system scheduled to be released this fall. XP is Microsoft's first major operating system upgrade since Windows 95. A company called Intertainer provided all the video content.
