July 12, 2006 Santa Clara, CA -- PMC-Sierra Inc. and Dasan Networks, Inc., a Korean supplier of broadband access equipment, have announced that PMC-Sierra's EPON fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) semiconductors are designed into Dasan's FTTH equipment. Korea Telecom (KT) has selected the equipment for volume deployment in Korea's FTTH network rollout that will deliver triple-play services.
KT is expected to begin volume deployments in the third quarter of this year. According to Korea's Ministry of Information and Communication, the number of broadband subscribers in Korea has reached 12.4 million as of March 2006.
"This is an important industry milestone for the deployment of high-quality, triple-play-ready gigabit-per-second FTTH access networks and we are delighted that Dasan, Korea's leading supplier of broadband equipment, has selected PMC-Sierra's EPON semiconductors for its FTTH solutions," said Victor Vaisleib, general manager of the FTTH Business Unit at PMC-Sierra. "Previously, KT had announced a number of certifications for gigabit-per-second FTTH network equipment, but following a comprehensive round of in-the-field trials, KT has chosen to move forward into volume deployment with equipment from Dasan based on PMC-Sierra EPON semiconductors."
Min Woo Nam, CEO of Dasan Networks, said, "We are very pleased to be partnering with PMC-Sierra in supplying KT with leading-edge gigabit-per-second EPON FTTH broadband access equipment. PMC-Sierra is the only FTTH silicon supplier with experience in deploying gigabit-per-second FTTH devices in millions of units. Their devices match the high-performance requirements of triple-play services with a proven hardware/software platform that is flexible, carrier programmable and scalable for future service requirements. From our experience, this is the only solution that achieves the low bill-of-materials cost required for high-volume deployment. Korea leads the world in broadband users and we are committed to increasing the number of users by increasing the performance of the network while lowering operating costs."
Dasan will supply customer-side optical network units (ONU) and optical line terminal (OLT) equipment for central offices. The PON architecture delivers 1-Gbit/sec bandwidth. Dasan's ONUs use PMC-Sierra's third-generation PAS6201 ONU device powered by PMC-Sierra's GigaPASS FTTH architecture. Dasan's OLT systems use PMC-Sierra's PAS5001 OLT device.
"After several field trials, KT has selected the Dasan/PMC-Sierra solution, most likely due to Dasan's proven track record in Korea as a leading broadband access equipment supplier and PMC-Sierra's proven track record in Japan, which has been the standard bearer for PON deployments," said PON industry analyst, Jeff Heynen, directing analyst, broadband and IPTV, Infonetics Research. "This is the long-awaited high-volume FTTH deployment in Korea, which certainly solidifies PMC-Sierra's strong position in the Asia-Pacific region."