Amedia pairs with Riverstone for FTTP

Amedia Networks, a publicly held startup vendor of access gateways and aggregating switches for active Ethernet fiber-to-the-premises networks, has signed a non-exclusive co-marketing agreement with Ethernet equipment vendor Riverstone Networks, wherein the two companies will sell their products together.

Neither company will resell the other’s products, and each company will also continue serving customers independently. The reseller pact that Riverstone recently formed with Lucent Technologies excludes Amedia, said Bill Zakowski, Amedia’s vice president of business development.

By testing the interoperability of their products, Amedia and Riverstone hope to save their customers the trouble of conducting that testing themselves.

With $4.6 million in new funds from a private placement in August, Amedia has enough money to continue operations through the first quarter of 2005, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission made on November 12. As of September 30, the company had a cash balance of about $3.5 million.

Amedia changed its focus to Ethernet access early this year with an exclusive license to technology created by Bell Labs. Zakowski expects Amedia to begin shipping its first products for lab trials shortly.

A former Lucent employee along with Amedia’s chief executive officer Frank Galuppo, Zakowski calls Amedia’s and Riverstone’s ties to Lucent coincidental and would not speculate on Lucent’s interest in either company.

Riverstone has its own stable of partners, including Allied Telesyn, Adva Optical Networking and MRV Communications.