fSONA lights up new wireless products

(Telephony) fSONA Communications is ready to roll with a set of optical wireless products that use lasers to deliver fiber-optic transmission speeds for broadband communications providers. The products are "very similar to (wireless) radios" that use the RF spectrum for transmission, said Steve Mecherle, fSONA's chief technical officer.

"We're probably going to be the first to mass-produce optical wireless as a carrier-class product and [at a] price point that's very competitive," he predicted.

The fSONA product transmits data at speeds ranging from 155 Mbps to 1.25 Gbps and is suitable for point-top-point private line connections, high-speed inter-LAN connectivity, fiber-like extensions to SONET/SDH ring services, PCS backhaul and short-haul campus links, the company said.

The system operates in the 1550 nanometer wavelength--conforming to fiber-optic networking industry standards--and addresses all eye safety concerns associated with laser communications, Mecherle said.

fSONA's laser beam covers over two kilometers and is resistant to weather conditions, as evidenced by tests the company performed with British Telecom in the United Kingdom.

"We can engineer 99% availability in a London fog environment over a 2 kilometer range," Mecherle promised. "At shorter ranges, you can get 99.9% availability."

fSONA's customers range from very small ISPs to CLECs, RBOCs and even major long-distance carriers, Mecherle said. Primarily, the company is approaching "customers who are off the main fiber pipe," such as an ISP who might want to hook into business customers but doesn't want to pay the price of a fiber link, he said.

"He can connect his clients down the street to Ethernet Internet connectivity through wireless links, either radio or optical," Mecherle said.