Lumentis wins 3G build in Sweden

Metro DWDM vendor Lumentis ventured into new territory today, announcing a deal with Hi3G, a mobile multimedia services provider in Sweden to supply DWDM equipment in its Stockholm 3G network. It marks the first announced customer for the startup.

Lumentis’ DWDM and SDH equipment is being used as the transport infrastructure for Hi3G in a trial, which should be carrying commercial traffic next year.

Traditionally, mobile carriers would use a Sonet add/drop multiplexer OC-48 switch, but only a fraction of it would be used for the mobile backbone, said Anders Lundberg, CEO of Lumentis.

“We can lower the cost by 50%,” Lundberg said. “We have been selected because of [our] combination of the optical backbone and lower transport backbone cost.”

Additionally, the Lumentis equipment removes the need for so many optical amplifiers, Lundberg said. The Lumentis box will carry 40 wavlengths 100 km without amplification. “That saves an up front cost of about $200,000 in amplifiers that aren’t needed,” he said.

The SDH/Sonet “muxponders” developed by Lumentis are targeted at mobile carriers and are intended to extract equipment layers from the network to simplify the mobile transport infrastructure. And when providers look to upgrade, they simply do it through wavelengths, according to Lundberg.

The deal with Hi3G could be very pivotal for Lumentis not only because it marks the first customer for the company, but because of the customer’s ties into other providers. Hi3G is 60% owned by Hutchison Whampoa and 40% by Investor AB. Hutchison Whampoa holds 3G licenses in numerous countries throughout the world.