Clearfield Helps HCI in Major FTTH Project in Kansas

Teleco Trailblazer to Bring Fiber to Almost 2000 Rural Kansas Homes

MINNEAPOLIS, July 22, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Home Communications, Inc. (HCI) is a telecommunications trailblazer in Kansas. So when HCI recently launched a Fiber to the Home (FTTH) project – partially financed with broadband stimulus funding under the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act -- the company knew it needed a reliable fiber management partner. Clearfield, Inc. (Nasdaq:CLFD), which had worked with HCI on previous projects, will assist in managing the more than 600 miles of fiber to be deployed to all of HCI's exchanges throughout nine cities, and ultimately serving approximately 1,800 homes. HCI Chief Technology Officer Richard Baldwin said the FTTH deployment was critical to provide area businesses and residents with the latest telecommunication advancements, such as high speed internet and internet protocol television (IPTV) with high definition channels. Clearfield's FieldSmart Fiber Crossover Distribution System (FxDS) panels will be used in HCI's central office with strategically-placed Fiber Scalability Center (FSC) PON cabinets equipped with Clearfield optical component splitting technology in the field. Baldwin cited several criteria for selecting Clearfield's products, including ease of access, customer turn-up efficiency, cost effectiveness and overall cleanliness of deployment. "When you look at fiber panels with no fiber jumpers, initially it's hard to determine which product is better," he said. "After you run the fiber jumpers, it doesn't take long to determine where manufacturing flaws exist. The fiber management design in the FieldSmart cabinet is far superior to others. Fiber jumpers stay organized and easy to manage from the first jumper to the last."

Clearfield President and CEO Cheri Beranek said, "HCI has a 75-year history of telecommunications leadership in Kansas. They have been a great customer of Clearfield's for years and we're proud to be their partner in this major fiber initiative."

About Home Communications, Inc. Home Communications, Inc, in Galva, celebrated their 75th anniversary in 2008. From its humble beginnings with Miles and Blanch Baldwin purchasing the New Gottland Telephone Exchange in 1933, HCI has grown into a technology leader for rural communications. Now in its fourth generation ownership and management, HCI provides quality telephone service, DSL Internet and cable television to customers in Galva, Canton, Roxbury, Gypsum, Assaria, Mentor, Salemsborg, Falun and Geneseo. For more information, visit www.hometelco.net.

About Clearfield, Inc. Clearfield, Inc. sets the standard for fiber performance with FiberDeep, while lowering the cost of broadband deployment with the FieldSmart fiber management platform and the CraftSmart OSP enclosure system. FieldSmart is the only fiber management platform to be designed around a single architecture – the Clearview Cassette and xPAK— for the inside plant, outside plant and access network. Scaling from 1 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. CraftSmart is the industry's only field enclosure system optimized for fiber deployment. FiberDeep is a new class of fiber patch cords that guarantees performance at .2dB insertion loss — fully half that of the industry standard. Clearfield is a public company traded on NASDAQ: CLFD.

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

Released July 22, 2011