5 June 2003 Vancouver, British Columbia Lightwave -- fSONA, producer of the SONAbeam series of optical wireless transmission equipment, announced today at Supercomm in Atlanta the release of the SONAbeam 155-E.
The SONAbeam E series completes fSONA's SONAbeam product line with a solution for lower-data rate, shorter distance applications. The SONAbeam 155-E transmits data from 1.5 Mbits/sec to 160-Mbits/sec at distances from 50 m up to 2,350 m.
"fSONA developed the E series in response to requests from our customers," explains Theresa Carbonneau, president and chief executive officer of fSONA. "The small form factor, lower data rates, and lower prices of the E series give SONAbeam customers the solution they have been asking for."
The product is aimed at alleviating the bandwidth gap in developing nations with a cost-effective carrier-class wireless transmission solution. The SONAbeam 155-E is incredibly versatile, offering support for a number of different network protocols through interchangeable cards. The interface cards will support NxT1/E1, 10/100 Ethernet, E3/DS3 protocols and will all offer the added reliability of clock data-rate recovery (CDR). The E series will also be popular with enterprise customers who wish to connect corporate campuses with a high-quality solution, say company representatives.
The SONAbeam E series is unique in its category of Free Space Optical (FSO) products due to the fact that, like the entire SONAbeam product line, the E series operates at the inherently eye-safe wavelength of 1,550 nm. The eye-safety characteristics allow greater laser output power and link margins than competitors operating below 1,400 nm. The E series comes with a complete network management suite incorporating all the features and options of the existing SONAbeam series.
The 155-E is the first in a new series; more products will be released throughout the year.
