June 11, 2004 Bothell, WA -- Solstar Inc., a provider of entertainment and communication services, has chosen Allied Telesyn, Inc. to deliver FTTH-based "triple play" services to 15,000 residential customers in southern Texas.
Allied Telesyn's 9000 Series will provide the single fiber access aggregation. It provides a carrier-class, IP-based multiservice access platform (MAP) designed to deliver voice, video, and data services over fiber and copper in the last mile. The NEBS-certified, environmentally hardened platform affords Solstar the option to deploy the system in the field using Allied Telesyn's line of outside plant cabinets.
"This deployment of our flagship 9000 MultiService Access Platform solution shows the strength of our active Ethernet-based fiber-to-the-home solution," said Howard Kamerer, president and COO of North American Operations for Allied Telesyn, Inc. "We're also pleased to be involved in every step of the deployment: network design, installation, training, and future operations support."
The Allied Telesyn single-fiber FTTH application is based on the new standard defined by the 802.11ah Ethernet in the First Mile (EFM) IEEE working group. The solution today offers 100 Mbits of full duplex dedicated bandwidth to each subscriber over a single strand of fiber, delivered over distances exceeding 70 km.
The offering includes Allied Telesyn's RG600 Series Residential Gateway, which terminates fiber at the customer premises and combines a Layer 2 switch, a broadband router, and a voice over IP (VoIP) gateway into a single platform.
"We looked at a passive optical network [PON] solution, but it didn't give us the bandwidth to provide the differentiated services our customers needed," said Bruce Bridgewater, Solstar senior vice president. "A total cost of ownership comparison to PON made the decision obvious: 100 Mbits dedicated bandwidth to each home for less capital expenditure and lower operational costs than the shared bandwidth of passive optical networks. Additionally, the operational benefits and the ease of use of a standards based Ethernet-based system over ATM provisioning provided the scalability needed to meet our growth plans."