Zhone Announces Saudi Telecom Win, New EFM Gear

Zhone Technologies Inc. today announced that Saudi Telecom Co. is using its 802.3ah Ethernet in the First Mile gear on 60,000 SHDSL.bis lines lines to deliver transparent LAN services. The vendor, which also announced new EFM products, claims STC’s EFM deploy is the world’s largest.

The value of the win was not announced.

STC is moving off its TDM network to migrate an IP network. It has a lot of copper, but much of it is not in great shape. So EFM appears to be an interim solution for STC until it can bring fiber all the way to the customer premises.

Zhone supports EFM, which delivers symmetrical 45mbps Ethernet over bonded copper infrastructure, on its MALC multiservice access platform (MSAP), a product category for which the vendor is the leader in the industry in terms of ports shipped. The MALC 719 model deployed by STC can support up to 384 EFM ports in a single, 7U chassis. And it can do both bridging and routing.

According to Zhone, its EFM solution was selected on the basis of link performance and standards-based interoperability trials, as well as on the strengths of its ZMS Management System, which provides operators synchronous network monitoring and QoS prioritization over a full range of services and media.

PTTs like STC are key targets for the EFM effort at Zhone, at which international business contributes close to 60 percents of the company’s revenue. CLECs also are a target for Zhone, which also sees smaller opportunity with municipal, education, government and utility markets. However, the company said it is not seeing the RBOCs as a good target for EFM given they’re trying to hold onto their legacy business services until competitive pressures from CLECs pushes them to offer Ethernet.

STC is Zhone’s first customer for standards-based EFM, although the vendor in June of 2006 announced support for the 803.2ah standard across its product line. Zhone also has an embedded based of 100,000 lines of pre-standard EFM, which is powered by the Net to Net gear Zhone garnered through its 2005 Paradyne acquisition.

In addition to the STC deal, Zhone introduced three new EFM/EOC SHDSL.bis line cards for its MALC and some new EtherXtend Ethernet access devices (EADs). The EADs come in one-, two- and four-port models for immediate provisioning of up to 22.4mbps symmetrical bandwidth. They also support IP SLA, rate shaping and tiered provisioning capabilities.

Saudi Telecom Co. www.stc.com.sa
Zhone Technologies www.zhone.com

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