Calix launches high-density VDSL2 platform

Calix today announced what the company said is the highest-density VDSL2 platform in the industry. The new offering is implemented by adding line cards to the company’s E7-2 Ethernet service access platform, which has been widely deployed by service providers to support fiber-to-the-home.

“When you’re deploying advanced services, often you don’t know what the take rates will be,” said Geoff Burke, senior director of corporate marketing for Calix, in an interview. The approach Calix has used with the product enables service providers to pay as they grow on a card by card or port by port basis, Burke said.

Calix announced two new VDSL2 line cards, which use a two-card slot, one rack unit module chasseis-based form factor. The cards provide up to 96 VDSL2 combo ports supporting voice and data services or 48 overlay ports and support for bonding and vectoring. Bonding enables multiple copper lines to be combined into a single connection to support higher-speed service, while vectoring strives to enhance copper’s ability to transmit data by canceling the noise that degrades the signal (CP: Adtran planning to boost FTTN bandwidth using vectoring). By using bonding and vectoring, Calix said the new line cards can support speeds of up to 100 Mb/s to all connected subscribers.

In addition the new Calix line cards support two 10 Gb/s Ethernet ports and two ports capable of gigabit Ethernet or 2.5 Gb/s service delivery. By providing multiple 10 Gb/s ports, the new VDSL2 platform can be used to create several 10 Gig E rings from a single location, facilitating future node splitting, where service providers double backhaul transport by moving platforms from existing Gig E rings to new ones.

Burke commented that DSL essentially has reached the end of its development cycle, as venture capital firms are no longer funding new development in this area. But by adding vectoring and bonding, Burke said the technology is still being pushed to support higher speeds.

The new Calix VDSL2 cards already have been deployed by Horizon in Ohio, Burke said.

Also today Calix announced a VDSL combo card for the Calix B-series Ethernet service access node. The card features 48 VDSL combo ports with bonding support and ADSL 2+ fallback, as well as four 10 Gig E ports in a 1RU card.