Zhone Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:ZHNE) says Etihad Etisalat (Mobily) of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is deploying Zhone's MXK Optical Line Termination (OLT) as part of a new nationwide GPON fiber-to-the-home project. The FTTH network will support the provision of residential and business services, as well as mobile backhaul.
Fixed broadband subscribers in Saudi Arabia number more than 2 million at the end of June 2011, according to Zhone; this figure represented greater than 33% of households. More than 80% of these fixed broadband connections are based on xDSL.
The scalability and density of Zhone’s MXK gives us the unprecedented flexibility, robust network control and the ability to offer more bandwidth to customers with greater efficiency,” said Salah ALamoudi, vice president, transmission, at Mobily. “Our established wireless presence and our expansive fixed broadband plans necessitated a multi-service platform choice with high scalability, density, reliability and interoperability. We tested many platforms before choosing the MXK as one of our FTTx vendor partners. Zhone’s success in the region with the MXK platform was a big reason for our choice of going with Zhone.”
Etihad Etisalat (Mobily) was established in 2004 by a consortium led by Etisalat, the UAE based telecom conglomerate. Mobily is the official brand name of Etihad Etisalat. Mobily owns the majority of shares in the Saudi National Fiber Network (SNFN). SNFN comprises 12,800 km of structured fiber cable deployed in seven fully protected rings covering 35 Saudi cities with access to 60 major hub sites for telecommunications points of presence. It also includes 20 inter-metropolis fiber loops in major Saudi cities.
Zhone asserts it has deployed over 2,600 of its MXK platforms with more than 150 service providers in more than 40 countries globally.The MXK provides non-blocking capacity of up to 3,600 GPON 100-Mbps subscribers or 360 Active Ethernet 1-Gbps subscribers.