June 30, 2009

Zhone gets RUS approval on MXK Platform

Zhone Technologies announced that its new MXK(™) platform has been accepted by the US Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) for use by RUS program participants. RUS and the National Telecommunications and Information Agency (NTIA) are responsible for dispersing the $7.2 billion in economic stimulus funding allocated for broadband initiatives under the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

RUS provides grants and low cost loans to help network operators secure authorized equipment to bring high-speed broadband services to rural and underserved communities. Zhone products first gained RUS acceptance in 2003, with the recently announced MXK being the newest addition to the program.

Zhone’s MXK represents significant milestones in broadband access networking and is expressly designed to support the new generation of HD media and on-demand video that require enormous amounts of dedicated bandwidth. In addition to providing a 2x bandwidth improvement over the closest competing platform, the MXK leverages Zhone’s well-proven SLMS(™) access operating system, giving network operators sophisticated service intelligence and intuitive management with ten years of feature development right out of the gate. The MXK is also the only platform to feature Smart OMCI(™) (Optical Network Terminal Management Control Interface) for true ONT standards-based interoperability and ease of use.

“We’re impressed with the performance, ease of installation, flexibility and cost effective price per port provided by Zhone,” said Jeff Lee, Plant Manager for Wisconsin based Chequamegon Communications. “The MXK has the horsepower and the backplane to offer the mega capacity and port counts we need to meet the ever-growing bandwidth desires of our customers.”

“We are very proud of what we’ve accomplished with the MXK, and we’re excited by the opportunity that RUS listing provides our customers,” said Steven Glapa, VP of product management and marketing for Zhone. “We believe that the MXK’s benchmark-setting performance can indeed make a significant contribution toward the achievement of America’s broadband objectives.”

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