Ericsson Continues Broadband Access Drive with Planned Entrisphere Acquisition

Long considered a wireless giant and maker of voice switching infrastructure, Ericsson Corp. has been moving aggressively through acquisitions to evolve toward a provider of broadband access equipment to service providers worldwide.

The Swedish networking giant accelerated the effort with its announcement Monday of plans to buy Entrisphere Inc., which has developed optical driven products including GPON equipment. This news comes just months after Ericsson detailed plans to buy edge routing power Redback Networks Inc. (http://www.xchangemag.com/articles/539/6ch209575721019.html)

Ericsson headed down the acquisition road to build a broadband networking power farther back, when it bought the assets of the former Marconi Networks for more than $2 billion.

Ericsson did not reveal an estimated value for the Entrisphere deal or detail future plans for the 7-year-old Santa Clara, Calif.-based firm and its 140 workers.

Ericsson points out that fiber technology is essential for high definition IPTV and other IP based services with high demand on bandwidth and cost efficiency.

The acquisition brings a leading IP-based broadband access platform ready for volume deployment compliant with both North American and international standards, according to Ericsson.

Fiber technology is a critical part of the next-generation access network and the standard is known as Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON).

Since its first deployment of fiber access solution in 2003, Entrisphere has worked with major operators to deliver IP based services to customers across North America and said its GPON system is already in use in this region.

"This acquisition provides us with a very strategic product suite within the fixed broadband access segment,” said Kurt Jofs, executive vice president and head of business unit Networks at Ericsson. “We can continue to build a strong position as operators start to deploy fiber access to deliver new IP based services."

Entrisphere Inc. www.entrisphere.com  

Ericsson Corp. www.ericsson.com

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