Ericsson "poised for broadband leadership". But how?

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 10 October 2006 07:48

IT Industry - Deals

Ericsson says it is unveiling a full service broadband strategy, based on user convenience and operators' need for minimised risk and fast time-to-market, claiming it is "poised to lead the way in full service broadband". Meanwhile market leader Alcatel has passed a 100 million DSL line milestone.

• Announcements

Ericsson, however, has given very little detail as to what this strategy involves, other than to say that, during Broadband World Forum 2006, currently underway in Paris, it will "demonstrate its different solutions for the operators to achieve full service broadband through technologies such as HSPA, the latest in EDA solutions (VDSL2+), IMS, GPON, and others."

IMS is the IP multimedia subsystem, a network architecture being touted as the key to operators' vision of offering a vast range of different services seamlessly across a single IP core network and multiple fixed and mobile access networks. GPON is gigabit passive optical networking, one of the main approaches to delivering fibre to the premises. EDA is ethernet DSL access, a means of rolling out a DSL network using ethernet connections to backhaul the DSLAMs rather than asynchronous transfer mode. Ericsson claims it is much more cost effective.

Ericsson' announced coincided with one from arch rival and DSL market leader Alcatel that it had passed a major DSL milestone having shipped in excess 100 million lines of DSLAM equipment. Today Alcatel claims it still holds more than one third of the DSL market. It has shipped half of this 100 million line total since October 2004.

In fact it was a decade ago this week that Alcatel scored the first major orders for DSLAMs that put it on the road to market leadership. This author's telecommunications newsletter, Exchange, reported in its October 13 1996 edition that " Four US telcos have commissioned Alcatel to supply end-to-end ADSL equipment. Alcatel said that it is negotiating with the four, Ameritech, Bellsouth, Pacific Bell and SBC Communications, through their joint procurement consortium, and expects to sign contracts by the end of 1996."

Just a decade ago ADSL was an almost unknown technology. Exchange felt it necessary to include an explanation: "ADSL uses the existing copper telephone wires. Alcatel claims that this enables the interaction of data networks and Internet at speeds up to 200 times faster than the common 28.8kbps rate allowed by analogue modems." (56kbps modems were not then commercially available!)

Alcatel's flagship DSLAM is its ISAM product family, billed as "a purpose-built 100 percent triple play IP access solution." Alcatel says it has been selected by 100 new customers in the past two years.