July 23, 2004 Alpharetta, GA -- Wave7 Optics, a developer of active and passive Ethernet- and IP-based fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) equipment, announced an additional $6 million in funding. This raises the total amount of venture capital investment to $68.5 million. The additional funding comes on a pro-rata basis from the company's six current investors: Advanced Technology Partners, Armada Venture Partners, Lucent Venture Partners, Mellon Ventures, Morgenthaler Ventures, and Oak Investment Partners.
"Wave7 has a compelling value proposition for the FTTP sector, as demonstrated by the fact that they now have more than 30 network operator customers around the world," said Robert (Robin) Bellas, general partner, Morgenthaler Ventures. "A very healthy backlog of orders and solid visibility through 2005 make this a sound investment for us."
"It's an exciting and positive endorsement of the company that all of our existing investors participated in the round on a full pro-rata basis," said Tom Tighe, Wave 7's president and CEO. "We have substantial cash reserves, but thought it was best for our growing business to raise this money in order to give management more freedom to focus on our industry-leading growth curve for FTTP network systems. Furthermore, we are expecting another investment later this year, in the October time frame, from an outside investor."
In addition to their Ethernet and IP expertise, the company has a significant stake in the ATM-based FTTP market sector, as illustrated by Hitachi Telecom's selection of Wave7 as a co-development partner for the new Hitachi AMN1200 product family, which meets the Full Service Access Network consortium broadband passive optical network (BPON) specification.
Wave7 Optics also recently announced new customers in the U.S. and Australia and new products which the company says creates a new class of service called "advanced FTTC" (fiber to the curb), which lowers the cost and improves FTTP performance for multiple-dwelling and multiple-tenant building applications.