June 28, 2006 Petah Tikva, Israel -- ECI Telecom today announced a series of GPON offerings that easily upgrades ECI's broadband solutions to support fiber-to-the home (FTTH), fiber-to-the premises (FTTP), and fiber-to-the node (FTTN) applications. These new offerings require a minimal upgrade path while providing carriers with operational and capital savings for the delivery of bandwidth-intensive video services like IPTV, high-definition TV (HDTV), and network-based Personal Video Recorder (nPVR).
ECI claims it is the only vendor to offer integrated GPON, xDSL, Gigabit Ethernet and ATM aggregation, Cellular UMTS backhauling, and voice services all on a unified management platform. Its GPON offering does not require maintenance or a specific power source, say company representatives, which contributes to operational savings. Moreover, its point-to-multipoint architecture does not require individual fibers for each point; one single port supports up to 128 FTTH users.
ECI's GPON offering is compelling for ILECs and CLECs that are pursuing greenfield and brownfield deployment scenarios using a fiber-based network or for applications that require maximum bandwidth to support advanced services, notes the company.
The single-shelf GPON system eliminates the need to add or replace equipment, making it very attractive for carriers to use optics for delivering high-bandwidth applications such as video. The interchangeable GPON-based cards can be implemented in ECI's broadband offerings, including its IP-based Hi-FOCuS 5 MSAG and Outside Plant ONU products, such as the G-PoweRAM and MiniShelf, as well as a range of ONTs, which are designed for customer premises and serve residential and business users.
"We believe our new GPON offering provides operators with unparalleled value for optical networks," contends Danny Eisner, executive vice president and general manager of ECI Telecom's Broadband Access Division. "By easily adding to currently installed boxes, operators can offer flexible optical solutions today while keeping costs down and maintaining future expenses."
ECI's GPON offerings will be available in Q4 2006.