OCTOBER 9, 2007 -- ECI Telecom (search for ECI Telecom) today announced new features to the Hi-FOCuS-5 Multi-Service Access Node (MSAN) family of products. With the MSAN's new traffic management capabilities, service providers experience increased flexibility through optimal bandwidth management, thereby improving delivery of IPTV and other video services, says the company.
"ECI has been at the forefront of access technology innovation since the beginning, consistently introducing and deploying new features as the market evolved," notes Erik M. Keith, senior analyst for broadband infrastructure at Current Analysis. "The features announced today, specifically the traffic management capabilities, introduce a QoS [quality-of-service] concept breakthrough by enabling service providers to optimize bandwidth management and thereby expedite their IPTV adoption rate," he explains. Current Analysis has ranked the Hi-FOCuS the top access platform for central office deployment.
ECI says its enhanced traffic and bandwidth management capabilities target IPTV and video, which are bandwidth- and delay-sensitive applications. Supporting over one million IPTV subscribers, the Hi-FOCuS MSAN continues to drive innovation in all areas of access infrastructure, claim company representatives. This capability allows carriers higher flexibility when deploying video networks through higher and more differentiated QoS granularity, as bandwidth can be managed at different levels depending on the service requested and the customers' needs. This capability, in turn, allows greater resolution in service providers' offerings and enables them to make use of new business models.
ECI reports that the equipment also is able to distinguish multicast traffic from unicast traffic within the same stream and prioritize them to avoid traffic congestion, thus providing service providers with improved efficiency in their networks.
Additional new features to the MSAN strengthen ECI's multi-service offering and provide increased capacity, allowing up to 10G per service slot for non-blocking deployment of all service types, including data, voice, and video over copper and fiber into any network architecture.
ECI says its any-card, any-slot architecture is the most versatile in the industry, as it allows the coexistence and deployment of all service types, such as video, voice, and high-speed data, alongside different access technologies and various protocols (including Layer 2 and Layer 3) in one platform, while retaining backward compatibility with previous versions of the platform. The Hi-FOCuS MSAN provides support for multi-fiber access-- both GPON and point-to-point Ethernet, xDSL, voice emulation, and voice simulation within a single platform.
In addition to the above features, ECI also is expanding its MSAN offering by introducing improved service blades. ECI's xDSL service blades make use of the same base card, which brings a clear opex benefit to carriers, as they reduce training time and costs and are easier to maintain, say ECI representatives. Further enhancements include a higher density VDSL2 card, now supporting 48 subscribers; a new, four-port GPON blade supporting up to a 128 split; and the industry's highest support for non-blocking 64 concurrent voice lines. For voice applications, ECI now has full interoperability with leading softswitch vendors, says the company.
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