HANCOCK TELECOM UTILIZES ALLWAVE^® FLEX ZWP FIBER IN ALL CABLE AND CONNECTIVITY

LOW LOSS SYSTEM EXTENDS REACH SERVING MORE SUBSCRIBERS AND HELPING TO LOWER OVERALL NETWORK COSTS

Norcross, GA, November 20, 2008 - OFS, designer, manufacturer and supplier of leading edge fiberoptic network products today announced that Hancock Telecom is using its AllWave^® FLEX ZWP fiber in all of its cable and connectivity products going forward. 

Hancock Telecom, the first incumbent telephone company in Indiana to provide Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH), began its deployment in 2002 and now offers triple play services to numerous subscribers, including voice, data and IPTV for less than one hundred dollars per month.  Hancock uses AllWave FLEX ZWP fiber to connect businesses and residences in the City of Greenfield, IN and surrounding areas.

“Working with a single vendor and single premium fiber, AllWave FLEX ZWP fiber, end to end, throughout our OSP and CO network has made our FTTH rollout in Central Indiana seamless and allowed us to take advantage of 50% more of the spectrum for future DWDM-PON applications,” said George Plisinski II, Senior Fiber Technician, Hancock Telecom.  “AllWave FLEX Jumpers have solved our high attenuation issue when splicing to drop at the house and relieved us of fiber breakage problems incurred with other suppliers’ fibers.”

"Our AllWave fiber is ideal for use in Hancock’s FTTH network," said Bill Kloss, Executive VP of Sales and Marketing, Americas for OFS. "The fiber is specifically designed to lower overall network cost, while increasing overall efficiency, and could save Hancock up to 40 percent in overall network costs."

About AllWave^® FLEX Fiber

AllWave FLEX ZWP Single-Mode Fiber is the first Zero Water Peak G.652D fiber to offer outstanding bend performance for Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH), enterprise networks, or any application where small bend diameters may be encountered.

AllWave FLEX ZWP Fiber maintains very low bending loss across the full usable spectrum of wavelengths from 1260 to 1625 nm. It can be coiled into a 20 mm diameter loop with < 0.5 dB incurred loss at 1625 nm and < 0.2 dB incurred loss at 1550 nm – five times better bending performance than conventional  single-mode and leading LWP fibers. AllWave FLEX ZWP Fiber also helps improve cable performance in demanding high-stress and low-temperature environments by providing double the microbending performance of conventional single-mode fibers.

About OFS

OFS is a world-leading designer, manufacturer and provider of optical fiber, optical fiber cable, FTTX, optical connectivity and specialty photonics products.  Our manufacturing and research divisions work together to provide innovative products and solutions that traverse many different applications as they link people and machines worldwide. Between continents, between cities, around neighborhoods, and into homes and businesses of digital consumers we provide the right optical fiber, optical cable and components for efficient, cost-effective transmission.
 
OFS’ corporate lineage dates back to 1876 and included technology powerhouses such as AT&T (NYSE: T) and Lucent Technologies (now Alcatel-Lucent, NYSE: ALU). Today, OFS is owned by Furukawa Electric, a multi-billion dollar global leader in optical communications. 

Headquartered in Norcross (near Atlanta) Georgia, U.S., OFS is a global provider with facilities in Avon, Connecticut; Carrollton, Georgia; Somerset, New Jersey; and Sturbridge, Massachusetts, as well as in Denmark, Germany and Russia.

About Hancock Telecom

Hancock Telecom serves over 8,200 access lines in Hancock, Henry, Madison, Marion and Hamilton Counties in Central Indiana with exchanges at Maxwell, Markleville, and McCordsville. Additionally, Hancock Communications, Inc. (described below) served over 1,800 access lines in the communities it serves.

Central Indiana Communications, Inc. currently acts as the holding company for all of Hancock’s unregulated lines of business which includes digital IP video, cellular partnerships, long distance, Internet services, key systems, real estate, leasing and voicemail. Central Indiana Communications, Inc. also owns Hancock Communications, Inc., a company established to offer competitive local communications services, including telephone, long distance and broadband. Hancock Communications, Inc. was the first competitive local exchange carrier licensed by the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission in 1995 and currently offers local service in Greenfield, Shirley, Wilkinson, Fortville, Knightstown and the Mt. Comfort area. It also has fiber optic facilities in Knightstown, Pendleton and Morristown. CICI also has invested in joint ventures with other independent telco’s in Indiana to increase the number of services available to Hancock’s customers as well as increase efficiencies through economies of scale. These ventures include:

• Indiana Fiber Network: Hancock Telecom helped establish a state-wide fiber optic network that is owned by independent telephone companies. Currently, 20 companies own the most comprehensive DWDM network throughout the state, which consists of over 1,000 miles of fiber optic cable that accesses all of Indiana’s major population areas. CICI currently owns a 10% interest in IFN.
• Indiana Video Network: Realizing the need to add video to its product portfolio, Hancock Telecom partnered with 8 other telephone companies to build a video head end (located at Hancock Telecom’s headquarters) in 2004. Htv (Hancock’s IP video service) obtains its signal from the IVN head-end and IVN uses IFN to transport the video signal to other companies throughout the state. Currently, CICI’s ownership interest in IVN is 12.5%.

For more information, please visit www.ofsoptics.com.

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Sherry Salyer      
OFS Public Relations      
shsalyer@ofsoptics.com    
Direct:  770-798-4210 
Mobile: 678-296-7034