Service Providers Can Now Reach Remote
and Low-Density Areas that Lack Broadband Access with Cost Effective Optical
Wireless
Vancouver, Canada – August 23, 2004 - fSONA Communications,
producer of the SONAbeam series of optical wireless products, today announced
that the SONAbeam has been granted RUS acceptance as a domestic product and
Buy American status by the Rural Utilities Service branch of the United States
Department of Agriculture.
RUS acceptance allows rural telephone companies to purchase fSONA’s
broadband optical wireless equipment with long-term, low-interest loans
from the US government. The RUS program is designed to increase the rate
of deployment of technology to rural areas and to provide them with the
same level of service available in large metropolitan areas.
“In the past, it has been a challenge for remote or low-density areas
to obtain service due to the difficulty of justifying the expense of offering
broadband in such areas. The RUS program has changed all that, making it
possible for these communities to purchase equipment, such as the SONAbeam™,
with loans from the U.S. government,”
comments Theresa Carbonneau, President and CEO of fSONA. “Our SONAbeam
products are ideal for building cost-effective wireless networks to provide
high-speed connectivity for businesses and to aggregate the bandwidth of
point-to-multipoint access technologies such as Wi-Fi.”
The SONAbeam™ series of free space optical (FSO) networking products
use an unlicensed, wireless technology operating at speeds up to 2.5 Gbps
and distances up to 5km. SONAbeam™ avoids the cost of digging to lay
fiber, licensing for radio frequencies, is immune to interference, and is
extremely secure. SONAbeam™ can quickly and cost-effectively be used
to build an optical wireless backbone that can deliver connectivity throughout
a community. As well, the SONAbeam™ is complementary with and can
aggregate the bandwidth of other access technologies such as radio, fiber
or satellite.
About fSONA
fSONA Systems is recognized as the preferred provider of optical wireless solutions for government, enterprise and service provider markets around the globe. Leveraging leading edge advancements in 1550nm optical transmission, the SONAbeam™ family of systems, based on free-space-optics (FSO), use a globally unlicensed, wireless technology to provide speeds up to 2.5 Gbps over distances up to 7km. For more information visit www.fsona.com
or www.free-space-optics.org
Further Information
For more information about fSONA, SONAbeam or Free-Space Optical Wireless, please contact:
604-273-6333
media@fsona.com
fSONA and SONAbeam® are trademarks of fSONA Networks. All other trademarks are properties of their respective companies.
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