June 11, 2007 -- Telco Systems has introduced what it calls "significant enhancements" to its EdgeGate CPE product family, designed to support the growing bandwidth requirements for high-speed, high-quality triple-play communications at an economical cost to residential and business end users.
Telco says that the product lines' new member, the EdgeGate 483, is based on field-proven, active Ethernet fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) technology that is oriented for high quality, SIP-based voice and future-proofed for the high-bandwidth requirements of IPTV, which the company notes it has been deploying in the field since 2000.
As an active Ethernet device, the EdgeGate 483 enables providers to offer dedicated bandwidth based on the subscriber's individual requirements and offer differential services for residential and business customers in the same area. According to the company, active Ethernet also supports a pay-as-you-grow philosophy by allowing new subscribers to be added within a 100-km service area at minimal cost.
The EdgeGate 483 offers eight Ethernet ports to support both data and video services for computers and TVs, and two analog voice ports, which can connect to two separate telephone lines that are converted to VoIP, says the company. The EdgeGate's design future-proofs the user's access connection by supporting either 100 Mbits/sec or 1 Gbit/sec in the same product, thus allowing the service provider to start with 100-Mbit/sec network to upgrade to 1 Gbit/sec without replacing the CPE, explain Telco Systems representatives. Design improvements also include the ability to separate technician access areas from subscriber access areas as well as enhanced cable management.
The EdgeGate 483 maintains high quality, SIP-based VoIP using traffic shaping technology, quality-of-service (QoS), and type of service standards that include IEEE 802.1p and TOS Marking, as well as IGMP for more efficient and advanced video capabilities, notes the company. The new EdgeGate 483 VoIP media gateway is part of a family of media gateways that comprise Telco Systems' RUS-approved FTTH and FTTB end-to-end procducts, which also includes the company's family of carrier-class IP aggregation and core routing switching platforms.
"The EdgeGate product line has been well received in both Greenfield and Brownfield FTTH networks," reports Irit Gillath, vice president of Telco Systems' VoIP product line. "The enhancements that we've made to the EdgeGate 483 will make the solution even more desirable to service providers, municipalities, and system integrators who are deploying these services," he says.
The device is installed at the end-user premise--either outside the premise or as an indoor device--as the edge of the fiber network. It offers an integrated UPS+PSU power option that will retain power for the phone lines for at least four hours to provide continued service during a power failure, says the company.
The EdgeGate 483 will be available in early July at a cost of under $500.