April 21, 2004 Santa Clara, CA--EPON provider Salira Optical Network Systems announced the introduction of broadband solutions based on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) standard for EPON. Salira will partner with system-on-a-chip provider Teknovus to develop EPON systems that comply with the IEEE 802.3ah EPON standard.
Salira's standards-based products are designed for deployment within the company's existing EPON solution, the Salira 2000 Platform. The standards-based EPON systems are expected to reduce the cost of delivering broadband services such as fiber-to-the-home (FTTH).
"The introduction of standards-based chipsets will further reduce the cost of our systems and provide superior value for our carrier customers," contends Ross Lau, Salira's chief executive. "These new products overcome the economic challenges associated with delivering fiber-based solutions to the home."
Salira and Teknovus stated that the standards-based product line will be "backward compatible" with Salira's existing product lines. This backward compatibility will enable standards-based optical line cards and optical network units to be installed in existing Salira 2500 head-end devices to offer a mixture of service types and to protect investment in existing products.
Salira will also introduce a standards-only system, expected to be available in the first quarter of 2005. The standards-based system, known as the Salira 3000 platform, will further reduce the cost of delivering advanced broadband access to business and residential customers. Teknovus will deliver high-quality chipsets based on the standard. The partnership with Salira is the first customer announcement for Teknovus.
"We look forward to a close partnership in which we develop standards-based products that are highly-differentiated in the marketplace," adds Gerry Pesavento, president and chief executive of Teknovus. "Our product road maps mesh well together, and we will begin to see the benefits of this common vision in upcoming product releases."
Ratification of the IEEE 802.3ah standard is expected by June 2004. The standard encompasses key technical elements needed to deploy broadband Ethernet services to business and residential users. The goal is to provide a wide range of benefits over traditional first mile technologies concerning cost, network simplicity, packet-based efficiency, bandwidth, scaling and provisioning. Salira expects to begin shipping standards-based products in volume by the fourth quarter of 2004.
The market for PON-enabled FTTH solutions is expected to expand quickly following official ratification of EPON standards. Probe Research estimates that global PON revenues will increase at a CAGR of 39.3% between 2003 and 2008. Infonetics Research reported in March 2004 that PON is growing rapidly in Asia Pacific, especially Japan, where hundreds of thousands of subscribers are using PON solutions. In April 2004, KDDI, Japan Telecom and others announced that they have agreed to establish "BB Japan," a consortium with the goal of expanding the broadband network services market. BB Japan's goal is to promote infrastructure, platform, content and services for FTTH through wide-ranging partnerships with other businesses related to broadband networking.