NEC rolls out Nextep DSLAM network over rural backhaul blackspot links

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 28 July 2011 17:55

Business IT - Networking

NEC is upgrading and expanding its Nextep DSLAM and associated MPLS network in areas served by the Regional Backhaul Blackspot program to deliver higher speeds, lower contention ratios and support for triple play and cloud services.

When the upgrade is completed later this year NEC DSLAMs will have been installed in an additional 62 exchange connected to five of the new RBBP fibre links in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, Northern Territory and Western Australia taking the total number of exchanges on the network to 162.

Rollout in exchanges on three of these links is now complete and is scheduled to be completed on the remaining two links by the end of 2011.
Richard McCarthy, network technology manager for the NEC Nextep business, told ExchangeDaily: "We have lit up three exchanges in the Geraldton area including Geraldton. In Victor Harbor we have lit up seven towns along that run and we have completed the seven towns in Gippsland on the run from Sale to Wonthaggi. The remaining ones are from Darwin to Brisbane, 28 towns on that run and from Broken Hill to Mooroopna in Victoria."

McCarthy said: "We have expanded the backhaul and the MPLS core so we can offer higher speeds across our own DSLAM network and the third party networks that we access. We are now offering ADSL2 across our whole platform. Traditionally we have offered ADSL1.

"Our network was based on legacy ATM switching technology so supporting class of service differentiation was difficult to support. We did support it but only across a subset of our products. The intention of this investment is to offer this capability with MPLS and with advanced layer 2 MPLS technology to allow the differentiation of those three type of services across the Rural Backhaul Blackspot network.

"Our service is wholesaled and we now offer a network that is capable of supporting cloud based services and that is going to be a key differentiator in the market."

NEC Nextep has operated as a purely wholesale provider of DSL services since its inception a decade ago and according to McCarthy it has over 100 channel partners. "That wholesale model is important in the RBBP area. We will be wholesaling ports in those areas and any channel partner can buy those ports."