Spediant enters access market with multi-loop DSL solution

Claiming to have the answer to incumbent carriers’ small-and mid-sized enterprise woes, Spediant Systems publicly unveiled itself this week, pushing a new multi-loop DSL solution designed to extend 10 Mb/s data speeds over the copper plant.

Spediant, a subsidiary of Orckit Communications, uses inverse multiplexing and newly standardized G.shdsl to bond up to eight copper pairs into a single fat pipe, not only creating much higher capacities than T-1 or standard DSL solutions but also booting loop’s range from the central office. Spediant’s vice president of marketing Haim Volinsky said the technology is tailor made for carriers looking to offer multi-megabit speeds to customers without incurring the cost of fiber deployment.

“Most of the service providers can’t make substantial investments right now,” he said.

Volinsky said once business get beyond the 10 employee mark, a T-1 line is no longer sufficient, but that same business would have to grow far larger, well beyond 100 employees before it could justify the cost of a direct fiber link. That creates a doldrums zone right at 10 Mb/s of capacity, which has not been served by the industry, Volinsky said. While there may be numerous customers falling into that zone, the revenue per customer is not high enough to justify deploying fiber, he added.

Spediant is set to debut its first product, the EML 8000 at the Outside Plant Expo in Charlotte, N.C. next month. Spediant claims the multi-loop DSL solution bonds up to 8 twisted pairs into a single virtual pipe capable of carrying 10 Mb/s of capacity at distances of 12,000 feet from the CO. The product won’t be commercially available until next year, but Spediant is putting it out for trial. Volinsky said two unnamed non-U.S. operators are already putting the solution through the hurdles. While Spediant is initially pitching the technology directly to carriers, Volinsky said it would consider OEM agreements similar to the one competitor Symmetricom inked with Alcatel.

“We feel we’re very complimentary to router and switch vendors,” Volinsky said. “While we will work in this direction, we have made no definite decisions yet.”

Spediant isn’t the only one targeting that 10 Mb/s null spot though. Actelis and the aforementioned Symmetricom are also targeting that space, developing copper-based systems designed to supplant lower bandwidth fiber connections. Spediant, however, said it believes it sets itself apart from the competition by attempting to compliment fiber solutions with copper instead of trying to replace it.