Philips and Wave7 Optics alliance extends fiber through the last mile

July 12, 2001 Philips Broadband Networks, Inc. (www.philips.com) and Wave7 Optics, Inc. (www.wave7optics.com) have formed a strategic alliance focusing on developing and promoting high-bandwidth, fiber-deep networks that eliminate the cost and implementation barriers faced by network operators in deploying Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) and Fiber-to-the-Business (FTTB) solutions.

The Wave7 Optics advanced optical access system provides video, high-speed data, and telephony services (IP-based or circuit-based) to subscribers with a bi-directional data rate of 500 Mb/sec/subscriber. The Wave7 Optics architecture overcomes the high fiber counts, limited distance range, and high equipment costs of competing FTTX solutions, such as passive optical networks (PONs). The solution is standards-based, cost-competitive with current HFC implementations, and includes quality-of-service prioritization of data packets with a proprietary protocol for enhanced features.