Corrigent Systems touts big win with Deutsche Telekom

FEBRUARY 6, 2008 By Meghan Fuller Hanna -- Corrigent Systems' (search for Corrigent Systems) vice president of marketing Gady Rosenfeld says the Deutsche Telekom win represents a series of "firsts" for the company: It is its first European customer, its first cable operator customer, and its first win with the recently introduced CM-4000 product.

Media Broadcast GmbH (formerly Deutsche Telekom's Media & Broadcast Unit before it was sold last month to French company TDF) has selected Corrigent's CM-100 and CM-4000 products as the main infrastructure building block of a new network to be build by Deutsche Telekom's wholesale business unit and leased to a leading cable operator in Germany.

"It is interesting," says Rosenfeld of DT's deployment. "Along with developing their own triple-play offering, they will now have a vested interest in some of their competitors' offerings through a network solution they are going to build for them and lease to them."

Initial deployments for DT's cable customer will occur in the two largest states in Germany, Bavaria and Lower Saxony, which encompass some of the country's largest metropolitan areas, including Hannover, Nuremberg, and Munich.

Rosenfeld says this first cable operator deployment actually serves a greater number of subscribers than Corrigent's largest existing contract, which was signed in 2004 with Japan's KDDI. (See "KDDI selects Corrigent to support triple-play rollout.") "This opportunity is probably as significant as KDDI has been to us," he admits. "With KDDI, we sold $100 million the first year. I'm not sure it will be that fast here, but the overall account should be very significant. We are the exclusive supplier for this network build."

In fact, Corrigent is optimistic the 15-year contract will prove even more significant going forward. "This is really a standard offering Deutsche Telekom as a wholesale carrier is going to have for cable operators in Europe," reports Rosenfeld. "They are going to start with this first cable operator, but once they are comfortable with the network they have put in place for that operator, they are going to be able to replicate that with other operators in Europe. Deutsche Telekom is the largest telecom company in Europe," he adds, "and we think there are additional opportunities there to pursue."

Traditionally, Corrigent has not targeted the North American cable MSO market, but this roundabout cable win with DT--where the end customer is a cable operator--may have the company rethinking its strategy, says Rosenfeld. "This is sort of a hybrid case of a telco building infrastructure for cable operators," he notes. "But obviously, now that we are going to have this significant installed base, we're going to leverage it with other prospects in the cable MSO market and get their feedback on what we can do for them."

Corrigent says its 10-Gbit/sec CM platforms combine Ethernet transport and full support for legacy SONET/SDH capabilities and MPLS and RPR technologies with end-to-end network management, to allow cost-effective and resilient delivery of video, voice, and data multi-play services.

The CM-4000, now generally available, supports the gradual migration from today's broadcast-centric services to future personalized video services, offering what the company claims is the highest level of quality of experience (QoE) with the capacity scaling capabilities required to address the expected growth in on-demand services.

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