News Releases

3/28/2007

Ledcor Technical Services to Deploy Hitachi GPON Solution in Coquille, Oregon

--Project will leverage resources developed for the Bandon, Oregon Gigabit Passive Optical Network built in 2006--

ATLANTA, GA, March 28, 2007- Hitachi Telecom (USA), Inc., today announced that Ledcor Technical Services (LTS) and ComSpan-Bandon Networks will bring the fiber optic network that is now successfully operating in Bandon, Oregon to the town of Coquille. Coquille is a town of approximately 4,000 on the Coquille River, about 17 miles inland from Bandon. Construction has already begun, with completion planned for the third quarter, 2007. Coquille and Bandon are being connected by fiber optic cable, which will carry the video feed from the head end located in Bandon to Coquille. LTS and ComSpan-Bandon Networks will offer triple play services - video, high speed Internet and voice.

"We have developed a business model that brings world-class bandwidth to clusters of smaller communities," said Ashwin Chitamun, SVP of Network Development for LTS. "Once the basic triple play services infrastructure - video, high speed Internet and voice - is established in one location, many of the resources such as the video head end and centralized network operations facilities can be leveraged to economically serve multiple communities. In addition this investment provides the platform to bring future services to these communities such as home security, tele-medicine, videoconferencing etc."

"Hitachi is pleased to support LTS and ComSpan-Bandon as they extend their business model to Coquille and other locations in the region and throughout North America," said Rick Schiavinato, Hitachi Telecom vice president sales and marketing. "Our AMN1220 GPON solution has earned a track record of high performance and reliability, and has demonstrated operational compatibility with third party systems that support a wide variety of voice and video services configurations."

About Hitachi's AMN1220 Product Family

The AMN1220 FTTP platform is a family of high-performance GPON products that provide ultra high bandwidth communication services to residential, business and institutional subscribers using a single optical fiber direct to the subscriber's premises. Compliant with ITU-T G.984 standards, the AMN1220 provides data rates of 2.488Gbit/s downstream and 1.244Gbit/s upstream. Standards compliance provides assurance that service providers will have maximum flexibility in implementing FTTP solutions as applications and services are added in the future. Legacy TDM services such as T1 are seamlessly handled in their native formats using GPON Encapsulation Mode (GEM) framing.

The AMN1220 consists of a centrally located Optical Line Terminal (OLT) connected via single-mode fiber optic cable to Optical Network Terminals (ONT) at the subscribers' premises. The OLT is equipped with a hybrid Layer 2/3 + TDM switch fabric for flexible traffic management and consolidation. ONTs include the GST, a single family / small business unit, and the GMT, a configurable multi-dwelling/multi-business ONT. All ONTs can provide a Gigabit Ethernet line rate interface to the subscriber, enabling a wide range of business applications today and providing future proofing for both residential and business networks.