May 26, 2004 Atlanta, GA -- Movaz Networks has announced the purchase and deployment of its optical networking equipment by Indiana Fiber Network (IFN) and South Slope Cooperative Telephone Co., Iowa's largest independent cooperative telephone company. The service providers are using Movaz Network's RAY Product Suite to provide voice, data, and video services. Together, the two contracts total over $2 million and raise the total number of Movaz customers to 46 worldwide.
"Bandwidth is a critical issue for South Slope as we continue to expand our market area and the services we offer, such as digital TV," explains JR Brumley, CEO, South Slope Cooperative Telephone Company. "With Movaz's optical networking equipment, we have the capacity and flexibility to grow the network and services in a manner that will best benefit our customers. The deployment was transparent to our customers as we put Movaz's optical networking equipment on top of our SONET ring."
IFN is a statewide fiber network owned by a consortium of 18 independent telephone companies and one independently owned competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) in Indiana. "Movaz equipment helped us achieve our objective of transporting traffic within our own ring rather than through other carriers in a point-to-point configuration," reports Kelly Dyer, president and CEO, IFN. "This greatly reduced operational costs as well as improved time-to-market for new services for consortium members. Also, Movaz provides us a cost-efficient way to break-out lambdas supporting another IFN objective of offering voice, video, and data in rural markets where deployment costs can be significant," he adds.
Both companies deployed Movaz's RAYexpress and RAYextender products. According to Movaz, the RAYexpress is an optical add/drop multiplexer that provides a versatile, cost effective, and compact platform for wavelength services in access and regional applications. RAYextender is an optical amplifier platform combining the cost effectiveness of typical low capacity, metro amplifiers with the advanced features of high capacity, long-haul amplifiers.
Movaz has also announced that its RAYexpress and RAYextender products were accepted and are included on The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service (RUS) List of Materials. RUS provides funding to rural telephone companies for the purchase of RUS-accepted telecommunications equipment.