GE Energy has recently become a member of the Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) Councils in Europe, Asia Pacific, and North America. The FTTH Councils are non-profit organizations established to help its members with planning, marketing, implementing, and managing FTTH solutions. The memberships enable GE Energy to participate in FTTH Council events and meetings across the regions. GE Energy will provide input to the strategy of achieving the target of having at least 1% households connected to FTTH/B in at least 15 countries in the FTTH Council Europe region and to have 8 of them with more than 10% households connected by 2012. GE Energy will also support the FTTH Council strategy in Asia Pacific and North America of accelerating the adoption of optical fiber access by all consumers and organizations that provide and use broadband services through factually based education and promotion. The first FTTH Council Europe event attended by GE Energy was the FTTH Conference in Lisbon, February 24-25, 2010, where we had an exhibition space showing our automated Smallworld Network Inventory* software for designing FTTH networks. We also attended the FTTH Council Asia Pacific event in Seoul, May 25-26, 2010.

GE Energy exhibited at the FTTH Conference in Lisbon on February 24-25, which was attended by more than 2,500 delegates from around the world. The conference focused on fiber as an enabler for new services and applications reflecting the theme �taking your life to new horizons�. There�s a recognition by the FTTH Council Europe that FTTH as a technology is not widely understood by consumers, but the demand for higher bandwidth to support entertainment services, social media, improved healthcare, government services, and education is all very well recognized. So this is where the emphasis is being placed as the driver for the rollout of FTTH networks. At the conference, GE Energy demonstrated the new FTTH design automation tools within the Smallworld Network Inventory*, which were very well received by both telecommunications and utility companies who were looking for high productivity tools to accelerate their planned fiber network roll outs.



* trademarks of General Electric Company.