Telco Systems Ships Metro Ethernet Platform

Telco Systems, Foxboro, Mass., today introduced the T-Metro, which the company said is the first in a series of MPLS-based, carrier-class multiservice metro Ethernet access platforms for carriers and service providers.

With the T-Metro, cable companies, wireless carriers and competitive local exchange carriers will be able offer a wide range of services through their own network that otherwise would only be available by leasing the services from Regional Bell Companies and reselling them to their own customers, according to David Lee, Telco’s vice president of marketing and services.

In addition to eliminating leasing and reselling of these services from a telecom provider, the T-Metro also uses Ethernet rather than SONET, Lee said.

With the metro Ethernet access, these carriers as well as any ILECs or RBOCs who don’t already offer them will be able to provide Virtual Private Network (VPN) services, Mutiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), T12/E1 Circuit emulation, fractional T1/EI circuit emulation, etc. to residential as well as business customers, Lee said.

“ Our new T-Metro redefines what a multiservice metro access edge platform should be in terms of cost, interfaces and variety of converged IP and TDM services it delivers, ” Lee said.The T-Metro also provides integration of TDM interfaces, enabling service providers to deliver legacy TDM services over Ethernet. The metro Ethernet access platform can act as either an edge device that interconnects with both a traditional PSTN TDM circuit-switched network and IP/MPLS core network or as an integral part of the MPLS network. The T-Metro supports a wide variety of interfaces, including copper and fiber-based fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, and T1/E1 Circuit Emulation interfaces.

The circuit emulation interfaces could be attractive to cable companies trying to grow market share in the business market because traditional cable infrastructure doesn’t provide enough bandwidth for most businesses, according to Lee.

The new platform, which is NEBS level 3 compliant, can define and manage Service Level Agreements (SLAs) throughout the network for each customer and service, according to Lee.

The T-Metro also provides advanced operations, administration and maintenance (OAM) capabilities, using its enhanced Ethernet service provisioning, monitoring and performance measuring capabilities to define and monitor SLAs and to enforce quality of service, according to the company. The administration and maintenance controls provide alarms much like in a traditional telephone network so the service providers knows immediately if part of the system goes down, meaning faster resolution of any network problems, according to Lee.

The T-Metro was designed for high-speed and high performance Metro Ethernet Access Rings and Networks and can be used in applications such as Cellular 2G/3G and PBX TDM backhaul; leased line replacement and service provisioning in multi-tenant/multi-dwelling units (MTU/MDU) environments, the company said.In a ring architecture, T-Metro provides a standards-based carrier grade ring solution with recovery from network failures in less than 50 milliseconds, providing switch recovery performance equal to SONET, Lee said.