February 17, 2004 Research Triangle Park, NC -- Nortel Networks will expand its broadband networking portfolio to enable traditional wireline service providers to deliver a new set of revenue-generating services to consumers and small-to-medium business customers over high-bandwidth, ultra-broadband infrastructure. Nortel Networks will enable 'triple play' services--voice, high definition television, and high speed data--in addition to a larger set of emerging broadband services such as Voice over IP (VoIP), person-to-person videoconferencing, and instant messaging that will empower wireline service providers to win new customers and drive higher average revenue per user.
"Today's announcement is part of our ongoing strategy to help service providers transform their business models by creating highly innovative new services and associated revenue streams," reports Brian McFadden, president, Optical Networks, Nortel Networks. "As part of this strategy, we also intend to equip key elements of the network with the necessary intelligence so that broadband users can have unprecedented flexibility in personalizing their service set and ultimate quality of experience. This intelligence is the glue that will help service providers unleash the potential of their end-to-end network infrastructure to deliver new value to their customers and ultimately enhance long-term competitiveness."
This new initiative will position Nortel Networks to offer service providers a portfolio of broadband networking solutions that spans optical, wireless, and wireline technologies. Telecommunications Services of Trinidad and Tobago Limited (TSTT) and Cable & Wireless Cayman Islands have separately announced that they will deploy DSL and VoIP solutions from Nortel Networks as part of complete network upgrades.
"There is significant capital spending that will occur in the broadband access market in the next four to five years--approximately $5 billion annually," contends Matt Davis, director, Broadband Access Technologies, Yankee Group. "This longer term spending trend is being driven by a need for telcos to replace much of the existing broadband equipment with a newer generation of infrastructure that is capable of supporting a triple play business model."
Nortel Networks will enable delivery of this expanded triple play service set through the creation of a comprehensive broadband networking solution that combines VoIP, multimedia services, optical networking, and wide area networking data solutions from Nortel Networks with products from newly formed strategic alliances with Calix, ECI Telecom, and KEYMILE. In addition, Nortel Networks will look to further expand its industry relationships to include a variety of video processing engines and in-home networking devices in order to fully realize a complete end-to-end triple play offer, say company representatives.
Calix will provide multiservice broadband loop carriers supporting a multitude of voice, data, and video services over fiber and copper access infrastructure to both small-to-medium business and residential subscribers for North American (ANSI) markets. Deployable in either central offices or remote terminals and supporting an array of optical and copper network interfaces, the Calix C7 provides the functionality of traditional DSLAMs and NG-DLCs, as well as FTTP network elements.
ECI Telecom will provide its mass-deployed platform delivering multi-xDSL, Fiber-to-the-Premises (FTTP), and aggregation platforms for central office DSLAM, Optical Line Termination (OLT), and remote terminal applications. ECI's optimized multi-service access gateways will provide the full scope of video, voice, and data services for a wide array of broadband access applications, while improving service provider economics by leveraging existing network assets and providing a migration path to next-generation networks. ECI is the supplier for DSL solutions for Telecommunications Services of Trinidad and Tobago Limited (TSTT) and Cable & Wireless Cayman Islands.
KEYMILE will provide its multiservice network access UMUX platform for markets using European standards (ETSI), providing an impressive range of existing and next-generation broadband services. These encompass both NG-DLC and DSLAM capabilities over SDH/ATM and Gigabit Ethernet networks and can be located in the central office, outside plant, and business premise. UMUX enables network operators to transform their existing telephony networks into converged IP solutions, all from a single box, covering copper and fiber, broadband and narrowband applications.