Midcontinent Communications Teams With Clearfield to Bring Fiber to Upper Midwest

Increased Bandwidth Requirements Are Driving FTTp Demand

MINNEAPOLIS, March 3, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Upper Midwest has been experiencing a bandwidth surge of sorts recently, which has compelled Midcontinent Communications to ramp up its fiber to the premises (FTTp) offerings – especially to the commercial business sector. To help meet the demand in a cost-effective manner, the company has turned to Clearfield, Inc. (Nasdaq:CLFD) for scalable fiber solutions that will service its 250,000 customers in North and South Dakota and parts of Minnesota.

Midcontinent Communications is the Upper Midwest's leading provider of cable television, local and long distance telephone service, broadband Internet access, and cable advertising services. Its service area covers more than 240 communities – most of which have burgeoning bandwidth needs. Midcontinent didn't have to go far to find a reputable telecommunications partner. Clearfield, which designs and manufactures state-of-the-art fiber distribution and management products, is located in Plymouth, Minnesota.

Brian Hanson, commercial construction manager for Midcontinent Communications, said he first became aware of Clearfield less than three years ago. Since that time, they have partnered with Clearfield on a number of fiber-based solutions. Most recently, Midcontinent was an early adopter of Clearfield's innovative fiber management product, the Clearview xPAK Cassette.

The xPAK, which is engineered to land small port count fiber terminations and optical components as conveniently and inexpensively as possible, was tailor-made for Midcontinent's needs. "We had looked for a long time to find a cost-effective product where we could terminate only 2 ports – versus 12 or 24. Clearfield came up with the solution. xPAK is the perfect solution for multiple Fiber-to-the-Business applications. We're using it in business parks, for business customers where we need to use small count fibers. We're using it as a building entrance terminal in a wall mount patch panel. It's also worked for us in a couple of locations as a transition box, where we provided services to wireless companies."

Clearfield's FieldSmart Fiber Delivery Point (FDP) PON-in-a-PED is another example of a scalable solution embraced by Midcontinent. Designed to allow for FTTp rollouts without a large initial capital expense, it is a cost-effective and flexible option for fiber deployment. "The PON-in-a-PED has worked very well for us. We can upsize and upgrade as our business parks grow. That way we don't have to invest any additional capital until we have additional growth in those business parks. This can be very beneficial."

The same philosophy extends to Clearfield's rack-mounted patch panels. "From our perspective, they're small and take up less space. They're easier to use. The guys in the field like them a lot, so they request them more. Like the xPAK, they're user-friendly and easy to put together."

Hanson concluded by praising Clearfield's overall product development capability and willingness to create solutions to meet the changing needs of the marketplace. "Whenever we've had a need for something new, Clearfield was always the first one there with a possible solution. Now you're seeing a lot of other manufacturers coming out with similar products. I certainly see this relationship continuing on into the future - as long as Clearfield keeps providing excellent solutions," Hanson said.

About Midcontinent

Midcontinent Communications is the Upper Midwest's leading provider of cable television, local and long distance telephone service, broadband Internet access, and cable advertising services. Their service area includes over 240 communities with approximately 250,000 customers in North and South Dakota and in Minnesota.

About Clearfield, Inc.

Clearfield, Inc. designs the FieldSmart fiber management platform — the only fiber management platform to be designed around a single architecture – the Clearview Cassette — for the inside plant, outside plant and access network. Scaling from 12 to 1728 ports, FieldSmart supports a wide range of panel and cabinet configurations, densities, connectors and adapter options, and are offered alongside an assortment of passive optical components. Clearfield provides a complete line of fiber and copper assemblies for inside plant, outside plant and access networks. Clearfield is a public company traded on NASDAQ: CLFD.

More information about Clearfield, Inc., its products and its people can be found at http://www.ClearfieldConnection.com.

CONTACT: Gary Young 612-247-8123
         garydyoung@comcast.net

Released March 3, 2011