2Wire adds FTTN and FTTP to lineup

2Wire today announced that it has started shipping fiber-to-the-node and fiber-to-the-premises versions of its residential gateways.

The HomePortal 3000 series supports FTTN and includes a VDSL model while the HomePortal 300 is designed for FTTP deployments. 2Wire, which is providing residential gateways to several telcos including SBC and BellSouth, developed the new gateways in part to take advantage of their increased interest in both architectures. However, the company also was being pushed by several existing customers, hence the support for VDSL.

“You can kind of derive from our customer list what this was designed for,” said Jaime Fink, director of product marketing for 2Wire.

In both cases, the units also will include support for multimedia coax networking within the home. Additionally, the will come equipped with a HyperG 802.11g wireless access point, firewall, automatic wireless security, and an intelligent service delivery platform with gateway remote control.

Fink said the company is trying to support as many in-home protocols as possible given the number of options currently available.

“[The coax support] was a direct customer request,” he said. “We are being fairly agnostic as to which particular coax network is going to be supported. There’s a lot flux right now in the market”

Like most residential gateway vendors, 2Wire believes the only feasible current way for carriers to deliver video in the home is via a wired medium. At the same time, it recognizes that the majority of data connections PCs will be wireless.

“In order to get that [video] quality that you need, you’ve got to have a wire and it’s got to be standardized,” Fink said.