BBWF Europe 2007

ECI Advances Access Node IPTV/Video Capabilities with Traffic and Bandwidth Management Enhancements

| Oct 11, 2007 | Broadband Infrastructure | Show Update

| Analyst: Erik Keith

Current Perspective: Positive
Vendor Importance: High
Market Impact: Moderate/High

Event Summary

On October 9th ECI Telecom announced new features to the Hi-FOCuS-5 Multi-Service Access Node (MSAN) family of products. With the MSAN’s new traffic management capabilities, service providers experience increased flexibility through optimal bandwidth management, improving efficient delivery of IPTV and other video services. ECI's equipment is also able to distinguish multicast traffic from unicast traffic within the same stream and prioritize them to avoid traffic congestion, thus providing service providers with better efficiency in their networks.

Analytical Summary

• Current Perspective: Positive on ECI’s incorporation of traffic and bandwidth management enhancements into its Hi-FOCuS-5 MSAN solution set, as this new capability will enable ECI’s operator customers to deliver advanced, broadcast-quality TV/video services with an increased level of “QoS confidence” and even overcome the potential perfect storm of unicast traffic congestion that several Tier 1 operators have experienced as a result of IPTV middleware deficiencies.

• Vendor Importance: High to ECI Telecom, which needed to incorporate these new enhancements into its MSAN proposition in order to maintain its competitive, technological, and service-enabling differentiation from rival broadband/multi-service access platforms. In the broadband access market, the vendors that are still legitimate contenders in this sector all offer similar product portfolios and “speeds/feeds” (and even pricing/contract tactics), so solution set differentiation will be come down to factors such as power consumption efficiency and the ability to support advanced service enablers such as traffic/bandwidth management.

• Market Impact: Moderate to high on the overall broadband access market, as ECI remains a solid contender in this sector thanks to its key technical and advanced service-enabling capabilities vis-à-vis rival platforms. ECI’s long-time commitment to delivering IPTV/video services has kept the company at the forefront of the telco IPTV market from the access platform perspective, as evidenced by its support of more than 1 million IPTV subscribers worldwide (second behind only Alcatel-Lucent, post-merger, from a telco access perspective) and a customer base that includes France Telecom, Deutsch Telekom, and Telecom Italia.

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Current Perspective

Competitive Positives and Concerns

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