Ikanos enters VDSL2 market

Ikanos Communications today unveiled one of the industry’s first VDSL2 chip sets, announcing the SmartLeap 9400 for central office and remote terminal equipment, and the CleverConnect 600 for customer premises equipment.

The first chip set will allow equipment vendors to develop copper-based gear capable of sending 100 Mb/s of data on the downstream path and 50 Mb/s upstream.

Ikanos, which is among the few vendors in the VDSL market, launched the chip despite the fact that a VDSL2 likely won’t be ratified until the middle of next year. “We know all the features that are going to be part of it already,” said Richard Sekar, vice president of marketing for Ikanos. “If there are new features introduced at the last minute, we can program it.”

Just as important, an early announcement gives the company a competitive jump on the VDSL2 market, which is expected to be a significantly larger than VDSL. While VDSL allows for similar speeds as VDSL2, many large telcos particularly in the U.S. and Europe shied away from the technology because it didn’t develop through the normal standards process. VDSL2 will allow carriers to offer higher-performance services including high-definition TV.

“The biggest advantage we have is incumbency,” said Sekar. “Typically it takes 18 months or so to reach deployment but once you reach deployment, it’s very difficult for competitors to approach you.”

On the CO and RT side, the SmartLeap 9400 consists of an eight-port burst-mode engine, a four-port analog font end and a single-port integrated front end. The CPE set includes a single-port burst-mode engine and single-port integrated front end.

ECI Telecom will be among the early users of the new Ikanos chipsets.