MINNEAPOLIS, Jan. 19 -- APA Optics Inc. reports new orders for its dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) products from two existing customers. One is for four 56-channel DWDM devices, while the other covers 20 8-channel DWDM units. APA is pleased to receive these new orders from repeat customers because they are a reflection of their satisfaction with our technology and products, said Anil K. Jain, APA's president and CEO. APA's patented bulk diffraction grating technology is ideally suited to support increasing channel counts. We believe the competitive advantages of our technology, including low insertion loss and compact device size, are enhanced as channel count increases. The company believes that bulk diffraction grating based DWDMs also have the ability to compete in the lower channel count segment of the market as well.France Telecom Wins Contract for Intranet Linking Government EntitiesPARIS, Jan. 19 -- France Telecom has been awarded a contract to design and deploy an intranet linking 16 French government sites with a total of 450,000 potential users. The project is being overseen by MTIC, an interministerial agency responsible for supporting the development of information and communications technologies for government use.In the Paris region, France Telecom has installed a backbone for the government's general secretariat using a dedicated 622-Mb/s synchronous digital hierarchy fiber optic loop. The backbone, which is linked directly to a France Telecom technical platform, performs concentration of data flows from all French ministries, based on France Telecom's SMHD high-speed multisite service solution. Outside of Paris, sites will be linked using a Frame Relay access. Data flows will also be concentrated on the fiber optic loop.