March 14, 2003-- Acantho, an Italian metro Ethernet service provider owned by the HERA utility consortium, has selected the Cisco ONS 15454 Multiservice Provisioning Platform (MSPP) and ONS 15302 Multiservice Access Platform in a quest to capture new market opportunities in tandem with its existing metro Ethernet switching infrastructure. Cisco Strategic Alliance partner Italtel is working with Acantho on systems integration for this new project.
Through its 600-km fiber-optic backbone network, Acantho already provides Ethernet broadband connectivity and services to business and residential customers in Italy's Emilia-Romagna region using Cisco gear. Integrating the Cisco ONS 15454 MSPP into its network enables Acantho to extend its services to business customers with investments in traditional SDH network infrastructures, alongside native optical Ethernet services.
The new equipment also is expected to help provide a way for Acantho to deliver Ethernet-based connectivity over an SDH transport layer, while continuing to meet customer needs to connect traditional PBX voice traffic and other legacy applications over the same network.
Acantho is now taking advantage of this new deployment in working with the regional government of Romagna, where the service provider will deliver broadband services to municipalities, including municipal buildings, university sites, and public health clinics. Acantho will provide a mixture of native Ethernet and SDH services to connect the different sites.
In addition to providing high-speed data connectivity and access to advanced services such as IP telephony and video surveillance, the project will help enable the local government to introduce new online initiatives, including telemedicine and citizen portals. Acantho also will provide daily data storage services to the Municipality of Bologna over 100-Mbit/sec switched Ethernet.
In addition to deploying the Cisco ONS 15454 MSPP in its aggregation network, Acantho will deploy the new Cisco ONS 15302 platform as a managed customer premises equipment (CPE) device at customer sites still requiring SDH connectivity. Acantho is already deploying a metro Ethernet switching architecture based on Cisco Catalyst 6500, Catalyst 3500, and Catalyst 4000 series switches.
Italtel is working to integrate the multiservice products within Acantho's metro Ethernet architecture, as well as supporting the deployment of voice over IP services throughout the Acantho broadband network.