Calix passes 1K milestone

Calix announced today it has shipped more than 1000 units of its C7 access platform to a little more than 80 service provider customers.

In the all-important port-count race, the company said that as of the end of the second quarter, it had shipped more than 100,000 ports into production service provider networks. Calix announced in February that it had shipped 500 ports to 50 different customers.

The C7, which is in its first year of general availability, has gotten a big boost from the increased interest by independent telcos in deploying “triple play” services of voice, data and video over the same infrastructure, said Kevin Walsh, vice president of marketing for Calix.

“In the last couple of months we’ve seen an increase in the clarity of mind that they’ve got to get into it,” he said. “The number of independent operating companies (IOCs) that are actively feeling pain from cable competitors is probably less than 10%. But thinking ahead, these wireline service providers are thinking that if they invest in these infrastructures now they can be prepared.”

It also helps that infrastructure costs have fallen enough to make the business case work on a relatively small scale with lower penetration rates than before, he said.

Additionally, there has been some renewed interest by IOCs in the edge-out CLEC strategy of building networks in areas adjacent to the local service territory.