Irish wholesale telecommunications operator enet chooses Calix for its new open access Fiber-to-the-Business network
AMSTERDAM – October 21, 2014 – Calix, Inc. (NYSE:CALX, news, filings) has today announced that its Calix E7-2 Ethernet Service Access Platform (ESAP) and P- and T-Series fiber services gateways have been chosen by enet for the rollout of the company’s “fibredirect” superfast fiber broadband service that targets small and medium-sized businesses in towns and cities throughout Ireland. enet, a private company, which operates fiber optic infrastructure on behalf of the Irish State, has now rolled out its “fibredirect” service in Claremorris, making that community Ireland’s first fiber town, and will soon connect every business in the town directly to the national fiber infrastructure. This open access service will also soon be offered to businesses in three additional towns – Kilkenny, Loughrea, and Ardee – and will help to energize the rural local economies by providing greater connectivity for businesses, increasing their prospects for competitiveness and job creation.
enet operates and manages the Irish State’s fiber optic infrastructure known as the Metropolitan Area Networks or MANs, a wholesale open access telecoms infrastructure with 94 MAN-enabled towns in the Republic of Ireland. The aim of the MANs is to provide a middle mile infrastructure with high bandwidth capacity to all authorized operators. This model enables operators to sell high-capacity broadband and telephony services to end users such as large corporations. enet already serves the main service providers in the country with open access fiber. The new “fibredirect” initiative aims to extend the services to local ISPs in towns and cities throughout Ireland and to target the smaller and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in those communities, bringing last mile fiber to businesses and business parks throughout the chosen locations.
Claremorris, in County Mayo in the West of Ireland, is the first community to go live with fiber business connections, as local ISP Airspeed Telecom has delivered speeds of up to 250 megabits per second (Mbps) since late September. enet “fibredirect” is a 100 percent fiber service, with fiber access infrastructure being delivered directly into premises. enet found the efficiency of GPON’s shared infrastructure as the best fiber technology fit for its network. enet determined that the Calix E7-2 ESAP was the best fit due to the E7-2’s industry-leading modularity and flexibility, meeting enet’s needs for a scalable solution that could go from smaller scale deployments like Claremorris and grow as customer demand increased.
Calix is working in partnership with Irish network systems integrator Agile Networks, a networking specialist already supporting 14 of the top 25 ISPs in Ireland. “The Calix portfolio is an excellent fit for enet’s needs and we believe introducing this technology into the marketplace will be truly disruptive in allowing greater rollout of fiber services in Ireland. Our partnership with Calix underlines the commitment to combine leading technology with local expertise, which is critical to the success of a national project of this scale and importance,” commented Darragh Richardson, managing director of Agile Networks.
Calix Advantage Program is a comprehensive program that combines the key tools and services necessary to manage, maintain, and support each customer’s access network. It provides combined network management systems, software upgrades, and technical support across the Calix Unified Access portfolio, which was instrumental in enet’s selection of the Calix solution.
enet’s network engineering manager Jim Molony said: “We had looked at a number of vendors to provide a suitable solution for our ‘fibredirect’ product, and early in the selection process it became clear that the Calix/Agile partnership was the right fit for enet. With the ‘bundled’ approach of the Calix Advantage Program, which took out many cost variables, and the straightforward procurement process, it made doing business with Calix and Agile very easy. The scalability options offered with the E7 platform give us the flexibility to grow locations to match rollout needs without disruptive re-provisioning in order to scale up.”
Molony added, “Deployment of the Calix solution in Claremorris has proven very successful, with the simplicity with which services could be provisioned on the Calix platform being a major factor. This gives us great confidence in moving forward with ‘fibredirect’ rollouts to many more locations, and strengthening further our Calix/Agile relationship.”
Andy Lockhart, senior vice president, international sales at Calix, said: “enet’s ‘fibredirect’ is an ambitious and impressive way of allowing Irish businesses to remain competitive in both urban and rural communities and we are pleased to play a key role in this initiative. Our E7 solutions are ideal for this kind of demand- and cost-driven model and we look forward to many further deployments in Ireland.”
For more information about Calix and its Unified Access portfolio, visit the Calix booth (#C20) at Broadband World Forum in Amsterdam, October 21 – 23.
About Calix
Calix (NYSE: CALX) is a global leader in access innovation. Its Unified Access portfolio of broadband communications access software, systems, and services enables communications service providers worldwide to transform their networks and become the broadband provider of choice to their subscribers. For more information, visit the Calix website at www.calix.com. For more information about Calix enabled gigabit networks, visit www.calix.com/gigabit/.
This press release may contain forward-looking statements that are based upon management’s current expectations and are inherently uncertain. Forward-looking statements are based upon information available to us as of the date of this release, and we assume no obligation to revise or update any such forward-looking statement to reflect any event or circumstance after the date of this release, except as required by law. Actual results and the timing of events could differ materially from current expectations based on risks and uncertainties affecting the Company’s business. The reader is cautioned not to unduly rely on the forward-looking statements contained in this press release. Additional information on potential factors that could affect Calix’s results and other risks and uncertainties are detailed in its reports on Form 10-Q for the second 2014 fiscal quarter and Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year 2013, filed with the SEC and available at www.sec.gov.
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