Fujitsu rebrands Adva’s Ethernet access gear

Fujitsu Network Communications is rebranding Adva Optical Networking’s FSP 150 family of Ethernet access products for sale in North America, calling it the Flashwave 5150 family.

The 5150 line, generally available now according to Fujitsu, includes the FW 5150 CP, a pizza-box-sized managed network demarcation unit, and the FW 5150 MX, an aggregation device.

Fujitsu has had an original equipment manufacturer partnership with Adva Optical for years, selling Adva’s FSP 500 fiber access device as the Flashwave 7410 and Adva’s FSP 3000 metro wavelength-division multiplexing platform as the Flashwave 7420. But Fujitsu previously had not sold Adva’s FSP 150 gear, which the German vendor began selling in the U.S. in the fourth quarter of last year.

“Fujitsu had to see a market validation,” said Abdul Kasim, Adva’s vice president of Ethernet business development. “The [FSP 150] customers we and Fujitsu have engaged have given favorable feedback, and that takes some time.”

Neither company will say how many customers the FSP 150 has in North America so far, but Adva insists the gear is engaged in multiple trials and live customer deployments.

Adva also recently acquired Covaro Networks, adding more Ethernet First Mile products to its portfolio. Fujitsu has barely begun to investigate whether or not it will eventually bring those Covaro products into the Flashwave fold as well.

Fujitsu also resells Ethernet access gear from Atrica, applying it to greenfield applications. The Flashwave 5150, in contrast, will be applied to existing networks, since, as a standards-based solution (unlike Atrica’s gear, the FSP 150 complies with the IEEE 802.3ah standard), it interoperates better with existing switches and routers, Fujitsu said.