Siemens links up to distribute Tut MTU products in Spain

Tut Systems will use Siemens S.A. Spain as a product distributor for its Expresso and IntelliPOP 5000 family of full service VDSL systems within neighborhood and multi-tenant unit properties in diversified Spanish markets.

Siemens will initially distribute the equipment to the hospitality and transportation markets and later expand to education buildings and commercial and residential campus environments in Spain, starting with Seville and moving to Majorca and Madrid.

An overseas distributor arrangement is the quickest way to attack new customers, said Mark Carpenter, Tut’s executive vice president of product development and marketing.

“We get a whole ton of leverage from Siemens,” said Carpenter, noting that international distributors are “local guys that speak the language” and support the products.

“It offloads us from having to be doing the direct customer support,” he said.

Domestically, Tut is pursuing similar distributor relationships, although its end user base is changing as CLECs and BLECs depart, Carpenter said.

“There’s a whole bunch of interest from an enterprise perspective of what our products can do, as opposed to the old method of service provider packaging up the products and then offering a service,” he said. “The end customers now are interested in deploying directly.”

These customers, he said, are taking Internet access to a new level of public access areas, such as automatic teller machines, ticketing machines and kiosks. Hotel guest rooms, where Siemens is taking the service and an area of traditional focus for Tut, are also natural locations for the technology, Carpenter said.

“The business and the enterprise segment is picking up,” he said. “That’s where we’re seeing the emerging opportunities, much more so than with the carriers.”