Korea Telecom Buys Riverstone Routers

Korea Telecom (www.kt.co.kr), the ninth largest telco in the world, has awarded Riverstone Networks Inc. (www.riverstonenet.com) a multimillion-dollar deal to supply it with routers to provide apartment dwellers with a variety of services. Specific details of the contract, announced today, were not disclosed.

“This tier-one customer win is not only significant for its size and scope, it also validates Riverstone's strong belief that the metro router marketplace is rapidly emerging internationally, as well as in the United States,” says Steve Garrison, director of corporate marketing at Riverstone, noting the products have already begun shipping to Korea Telecom.

Through a metro access network known as the Ntopia project, Korea Telecom aims to bring bandwidth-on-demand Ethernet services (starting at half a megabit) to nearly 80,000 dwelling units throughout South Korea this year, according to Garrison.

That network will include Riverstone RS 8000 and RS 3000 routers that offer gigabit Ethernet, packet-over-SONET/SDH, and clear channel T3 connectivity to provide optical last-mile IP access and service creation capabilities. The RS8000 is for larger buildings leveraging a SONET uplink to the core, while the RS3000 is for smaller buildings and uses a T3 uplink to the core.

The initial Korea Telecom service based on those routers will be Internet connectivity with bandwidth on demand provisioning based on Riverstone’s rate limiting technology, says Garrison. That service will be launched in July. Per port rate limiting gives a carrier the ability to scale a router port on demand as needed in 1kbps increments. “Korea Telecom was very keen on that and the ability to use usage based billing,” says Garrison.

Initially Korea Telecom will not implement MPLS, which is supported on Riverstone products, says Garrison. But the telco in its press release announcing the Riverstone deal said additional planned services – to be available at an as-yet-unspecific date -- include VPN applications for home and office connectivity, and Virtual Leased Lines (VLLs). Those future products would require MPLS, notes Garrison.

Riverstone's products are already deployed in more than 40 countries with such carriers as British Telecom, Genuity, WorldCom, MAE West Ames, EarthLink, NTT and Telefonica.

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