Ericsson's upgraded GPON (Gigabit Passive Optical Network) switch capability will meet demands for multimedia capacity for years to come.

With more and more mainstream carriers such as AT&T selecting GPON technology for its potential to deliver greater speeds than current broadband technologies, Ericsson's latest upgrade to its EDA 1500 GPON system will keep customers moving swiftly in the right direction.

The upgraded version of EDA 1500 can now deliver bandwidth of up to 320Gbps, and will play an important role for customers wanting to provide cutting-edge services such as IPTV and other IP-based multimedia services. In particular, it will enable the move from broadcast or multicast (one-to-many) to unicast (one-to-one) broadband connections. This will allow individual end users to experience their own high-speed services such as video-on-demand and time-shifting TV streams.

"The bandwidth increase of this upgrade takes the access platform far into the forefront of any other access platform available today," says Peter Bourne, CEO of Entrisphere, an Ericsson company specicializing in multi-access solutions for telecommunications carriers.

"Its 320Gbps of bidirectional switching fabric capacity is unheard of - you have an industry-leading upgrade to an already industry-leading platform." It will also increase operational efficiencies and contribute to lower cost of ownership, he notes. "Network infrastructure and investments are high, so with a platform with 320Gbps switching fabric in the network, you know you're not going to have to change that out for quite some time to come," Bourne says.

Ericsson has expanded its wireline portfolio with the recent acquisitions of Entrisphere and Redback Networks, which are reinforcing the company's vision for Full Service Broadband. The enhanced EDA 1500 system and the new Redback SmartEdge 1200 have been introduced to provide the capacity, scale and robustness required by mass-market IPTV and other IP-based services delivered over a fixed broadband infrastructure.

The Ericsson GPON solution is already in service in North America and has been deployed as the fiber access platform of choice by leading telecom carriers around the globe, while the upgrade simply increases the capacity available. The company will also supply the EDA 1500 solution to AT&T as part of the operator's move to expand its fiber optic network for IPTV and triple-play services, with operations due to begin in 2008.