Clearfield Announces Nearly Six Million Fiber Connections Shipped

Company Actively Expanding From Its Base of FTTH to Fiber to the Tower and Antenna

MINNEAPOLIS, Dec. 4, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Clearfield, Inc. (Nasdaq:CLFD) the specialist in fiber management and connectivity platforms for communications providers, today announced that in its five year history, it has shipped more than six million fiber ports, with nearly two million ports in the last year.

"Serving the rural telephone marketplace has been paramount to Clearfield's early success," explained Cheri Beranek, Clearfield president and CEO. "With hundreds of small companies across the country, we have the great fortune of serving a very broad market."

One such firm is McDonough Telephone Cooperative, located in rural west central Illinois. McDonough is made up of 12 exchanges serving 20 communities. Dedicated to ensuring their 3,700 members have access to leading-edge performance, McDonough has been building a fiber to the home network utilizing Clearfield's recently announced FieldSmart FxHD high density fiber distribution frame. Crucial to their design was density and the ability to reduce the footprint as space in the central office was limited.

"We've used Clearfield throughout our deployment," explained Troy Friday, OSP manager for McDonough. "When we made the decision to use Clearfield over the competition, we knew performance of the terminated fiber end would always be stellar. Throughout the deployment, we've had access to Clearfield engineers which has been an added bonus. This latest product builds on the modularity of the platform and that keeps our operating costs in check."

Another example is Minford Telephone Company. The rural, hilly area of southern Ohio has experienced spurts of change as farmers sporadically sell off certain parts of their acreage to be developed into new residential or business areas. As Minford Telephone works to provide fiber optic service to these areas, forecasting for growth proves to be quite a challenge – a challenge that they've turned to Clearfield to help solve.

"Clearfield's flexibility in their PON cabinets allows us to plan the best we can, with the comfort of knowing the ease of adding in more distribution fibers, if needed, in the future," said Casey Neal, Minford project manager. 

Providing IPTV signal coverage for their service area is another of Minford's core offerings to the community in which Clearfield product was utilized. The FieldSmart FxDS Frame with a PON Insert fit well into a small space tower building placed next to the antenna equipment.  

"Contractors find the installation of Clearfield products to be very intuitive and consistent throughout all parts of the network," concluded Neal.   

"McDonough and Minford telephone companies are both prime examples of the work that our rural telephone companies are doing," continues Beranek. "We're thrilled to be working with our core base of broadband service providers as they build their business with an expanding presence in both wire line as well as wireless connectivity markets."

About Clearfield

Clearfield, Inc. (Nasdaq:CLFD) designs, manufactures and distributes fiber optic management products for the communications networks of leading ILECS, CLECs, MSO/cable TV companies and mobile broadband providers. We help service providers solve the Fiber Puzzle, which is how to reduce high costs associated with deploying, managing, protecting and scaling a fiber optic network to deliver the mobile, residential and business services customers want. Based on the patented Clearview™ Cassette, our unique single-architected, modular fiber management platform is designed to lower the cost of broadband deployment and maintenance by consolidating, protecting and distributing incoming and outgoing fiber circuits and enable our customers to scale their operations as their subscriber revenues increase. Headquartered in Plymouth, MN, Clearfield deploys millions of fiber ports each year throughout North America.

CONTACT: Clearfield PR Contact
         Christy Kemp
         Calysto Communications
         Tel: + 1 404 266 2060 x539
         ckemp@calysto.com

Released December 4, 2012