OFS, a designer, manufacturer and supplier of leading edge fiber-optic products, announced the signing of a license agreement with BTexact Technologies, the advanced research and technology business of British Telecommunications plc (BT), to allow it to use BT's blown fiber technology and know-how.
The blown fiber technique reduces the cost and increases the reliability of installing fiber in duct networks. OFS will use the technology in its fiber-to-the-home solution, the Access Advantage System. The Access Advantage System is a comprehensive solution enabling economical optical connectivity to homes, businesses, and multiple dwelling units (MDUs), including those in previously hard-to-reach areas.
Pairing BTexact's blown fiber technology with OFS' industry leading optical fiber and cable innovation has the potential of lowering fiber deployment costs related to FTTx build.
"Previously unavailable right-of-ways, such as gas lines and sewer pipes can now be utilized to reach the customer," says Paul Neuhart, president of the optical cable division at OFS. "The BTexact technology, coupled with OFS' fiber and micro cable capabilities, will provide a quantum leap in the development of economic FTTx solutions."
"BTexact Technologies has an international reputation for creating the technology that underpins some of the world's most pioneering commercial applications," says Stewart Davies, chief executive officer of BTexact Technologies. "We are pleased that we have been able to provide OFS with solutions that will enable them to provide fiber-to-the-home far quicker and more cost effectively than was previously possible. BTexact has a rich portfolio of technologies and we have barely scratched the surface of our portfolio's licensing potential, but it is through agreements such as these that we are beginning to realize that promise."
OFS' revolutionary XpressTube FX blown fiber unit designs can be blown into inexpensive duct networks, eliminating invasive and disruptive excavation costs, and expenditures on costly procurement of rights of way. Initial investment costs are likewise kept to a minimum as fiber can be deployed as needed based on customer demand.
The Access Advantage solution is optimized with OFS' AllWave and LaserWave fibers to lower the service provider's cost per bit over the lifetime of the cabling system. AllWave fiber enables the use of coarse wavelength division multiplexing (CWDM) in the 1400-nm wavelength band to support lower cost services to businesses and homes connected to passive optical networks (PONS) or local Ethernet switches. LaserWave multimode fibers enables the use of lower cost optical transceivers, thereby reducing the cost of connections to local Ethernet switches for homes and businesses.