Corning Announces Fiber Advancements

CORNING, N.Y., Sept. 8, 2003--Corning Inc. announced today the global conversion of its standard single-mode fiber product portfolio to Corning SMF-28e low-water peak optical fiber. The company also announced advancements in both optical and geometry specifications for SMF-28e fiber.

Enhanced specifications for SMF-28e fiber in the areas of attenuation, dispersion and cladding non-circularity are being introduced this week at NFOEC 2003 in Orlando, Fla.
Corning has now established SMF-28e fiber as the successor product to SMF-28 optical fiber. Introduced in 2001, SMF-28e fiber is compliant to all major industry standards and is compatible and fully interoperable with legacy single-mode networks.

Corning said it has lowered the SMF-28e fiber attenuation specification by up to 9 percent for three major operating windows, allowing greater application design flexibility. The company said it has improved both the specified dispersion limits and the maximum zero-dispersion slope values, and that SMF-28e fiber now has more stringent geometry specifications for cladding noncircularity, making it easier to install and handle as a result of improved fiber splicing and connectorization performance.