June 24, 2009

Calix Announces New E5-312 Platform and Enhanced Extended Reach GPON

Calix announced the availability of the Calix E5-312, a residential Active Ethernet (AE) platform. With over 375 fiber to the premises (FTTP) customers to date, Calix is continuing to expand its industry-leading fiber portfolio with the small form-factor E5-312. Calix also announced today the availability of an enhancement to its industry-leading Extended Reach GPON on the Calix C7 Multiservice Access Platform (MSAP), now allowing customers to reach subscribers located up to 40 km from any Calix C7 FTTP serving location.

The Calix E5-312 delivers last mile AE service to residential subscribers at distances of up to 60 km while preserving service providers' current investment in Calix' optical network terminals (ONTs). The new residential AE platform offers a number of benefits:

*The E5-312 is a purpose-built, environmentally hardened, small-form-factor 1RU platform that enables flexible deployment from the CO to the edge of the access network.
 

*AE enables up to 1Gbps dedicated symmetrical bandwidth, allowing service providers to strategically serve high capacity residential customers whose upstream bandwidth requirements exceed that of the general consumer.
 

*The flexibility of the Calix 700GX ONTs, which auto-detects and supports both AE and GPON from a common ONT, enables service providers to use the E5-312, or other Calix C- and E-Series platforms, to select the appropriate form factor and technology to match the service requirements of subscribers without the capital or operational expense of replacing the ONT.
 

The entire Calix FTTP product portfolio supports Calix' 700GX ONT family, which leverages Calix' ONT auto-detect optics to support GPON and Active Ethernet. Auto-detect optics streamline a service provider's ability to offer any service, any technology and any speed, including RF overlay and IPTV, from a common FTTP serving location. The 700GX ONTs allow service providers to remotely provision and convert any subscriber to residential AE without expensive truck-rolls or customer premises ONT upgrades.

Scalable Solution Supports Active Ethernet Services
The E5-312 offers a number of important features to meet service provider deployment needs:

*The platform has 12 GE SFP ports for symmetric 1GE AE services that support copper or bi-directional (single fiber) optical modules; the AE optics modules are Calix screened to ensure carrier-grade performance.
 

*Two standards-based 10GE SFP+ ports support ring and point-to-point topologies.
 

*The platform supports several access network topologies, including GE/AE aggregation, GE uplink aggregation, 10GE/GE network uplink, and link aggregation.
 

*Link aggregation provides logical NxGE link bonding for bandwidth expansion.
 

*The E5-312 is fully managed by the Calix Management System (CMS), which provides a single network view and a common user experience independent of media type, protocol, or service.
 

*Enhanced Extended Reach GPON Solution Optimized for Rural Environments

The latest C7 software Release 6.1 further enhances the Calix Extended Reach GPON solution, enabling a standards-based solution that, when deployed with a specialized, pluggable OIM, doubles a service provider's GPON service radius from 20 km to 40 km. For many service providers in rural, low-density areas, this capability can save $50,000 or more in each instance that this extra reach allows avoiding the installation and turn-up costs associated with reaching remote users beyond the traditional 20km limit.

The latest Extended Reach GPON features the following benefits:

*Doubles the reach of standards-based GPON from 20 km to 40 km.
*Support on all existing C7 GPON OLT line cards (new pluggable OIM required).
*Support by any Calix 700, 700G, or 700GX ONT.
*Standards-compliant solution based on ITU-TG.984.6 and Amendment 2 to ITU-T G.984.2.
 

Armed with these new Calix access innovations, service providers now have the luxury of using the optimal FTTP technology to address their service demands, serving GPON up to 40 km or Active Ethernet up to 60 km.

Calix Dominates in Fiber Deployments
Over the past several years, Calix has continued to gain fiber market share among North American service providers of all types. Calix now boasts over 375 fiber customers, which span telcos, cable operators, developers and municipalities. More than 75 percent of Calix' customer base is deploying fiber technologies today.

"Calix continues to innovate across the fiber portfolio. Enhancing FTTP reach flexibility provides a key weapon in the service provider arsenal," said Geoff Burke, senior director of corporate marketing at Calix. "Extensive polling conducted by Calix of hundreds of its customers who plan to apply for broadband stimulus awards indicates that over 80 percent plan to propose FTTP as their network technology of choice, nearly 70 percent plan to use a mix of GPON and AE technologies, and over 70 percent plan to address "unserved" areas in their proposals. We expect the unique reach capabilities of both Calix Extended Reach GPON and Active Ethernet solutions to play a major role in many stimulus projects."

Availability
The Calix E5-312 platform and 40 km Extended Reach GPON solution on the Calix C7 are in use in customer networks today and available now.


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