March 26, 2003--The 21st Century Infrastructures Consortium and LBDC FTTH Holdings Inc. have announced their plans to jointly build high-capacity Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH), Fiber-To-The-Desk (FTTD), and WiFi infrastructures in Seattle and New York City, starting with a pilot project in September.
LBDC FTTH Holdings Inc. today also released its Request For Proposals, which invites companies and firms for partnering with the company in its efforts. The RFP invites companies and organizations of all kinds: suppliers, vendors, and technology providers, as well as solution providers, content owners, and advanced service providers. The actual commercial rollouts will take place in January 2004 in New York City and Seattle, after technical results from the pilot are analyzed.
LBDC FTTH Holdings Inc. plans to build high-capacity FTTH/D infrastructures in twenty-five to thirty cities in the United States. Because building an end-to-end fiber-optic based infrastructure is a time-consuming and capital-intensive project, along with the political and organizational hassles of licenses, permits and planning, LBDC FTTH Holdings Inc. designed and developed its "FiberBroadband" strategy, which is not based on Passive Optical Networks (PONs).
"LBDC's FiberBroadband approach is a wider approach that just an FTTx architecture solution," asserts Gregory Nemitz, chief technology officer of LBDC FTTH Holdings Inc. "It also involves the higher-level Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) infrastructures, VoIP and TVoIP infrastructures as well as marketing, business and service models, including on-demand services and Set-Top-Box platforms. LBDC's FiberBroadband solution is a future-proof alternative to- Passive Optical Networks."
"LBDC has the ambition as well as the power and dedication to connect millions of households in the United States and to serve them with up to 100-Mbits/sec digital TV and radio, crystal clear phone calls, as well as allow the customers to use other high-bandwidth services such as Videochat and Videophone at lower costs than they are paying today," adds Neal Lachman, acting executive director of the 21st Century Infrastructures Consortium. "The pilot projects in Seattle and New York City are just formalities that is done for investors' sake, otherwise LBDC would start rolling out definite connections. However, it provides them also an opportunity to open the doors to everyone who thinks their company's technologies and services are worth a shot. It opens a much anticipated window of opportunity in this brand-new industry for many vendors."