The acquisition brings together Ericsson’s GPON solution, which is deployed by major service providers worldwide (including AT&T in the United States), with North America’s leading access portfolio. Ericsson is the world’s largest provider of telecommunications technology and services; Calix is a leading provider of fiber and DSL access equipment to Tier-2 and Tier-3 telcos in North America. Ericsson’s fiber access assets expected to be included are its EDA 1500 GPON solution and complementary ONT portfolio.

Calix will offer employment to as many as 61 U.S.-based employees of Ericsson and will take over support of the acquired products. The acquisition transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2012. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. After close of the transaction, Calix expects operations related to the acquired assets to be accretive to non-GAAP earnings per share.

Ericsson to Resell Calix FTTH and VDSL2 Solutions Worldwide
The global reseller agreement between the two companies allows Ericsson to sell Calix systems and software as its preferred fiber and VDSL2 access solution in 180 countries worldwide. This preferred partnership becomes effective upon the close of the acquisition and remains effective for three years.

“This partnership provides Calix, already North America’s fiber access deployment leader, with an extensive new global reseller channel, while our acquisition of Ericsson’s fiber access portfolio delivers powerful new complements to our industry-leading Unified Access portfolio,” said Carl Russo, president and CEO of Calix. “This partnership, built on a clear alignment of corporate strategy and direction, allows Ericsson to fully leverage its strengths in wireless and end-to-end services while relying on Calix to provide innovation and expertise in fixed-line broadband access. We are excited about the opportunity to assume responsibility for development and support of Ericsson’s fiber access business and look forward to working closely with Ericsson and its broad customer base as a preferred global partner.”

“We believe that this partnership will provide our existing fiber access customers with world-class support and maintenance, and an expanded portfolio of access systems and software from a leading company totally focused on access,” said Jan Häglund, vice president and head of product area IP and broadband at Ericsson.

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Saddleback is a division of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community that serves more than 2,500 residential, small business and corporate enterprise customers in the Phoenix metropolitan area. When it was founded in 1997, the Community had no broadband service and only 75 percent wireline voice coverage. Since then, Saddleback built a fiber-based self-healing network over which it provides state-of-the-art telephony, Ethernet and IP solutions. Today, the service area has 100 percent coverage for ultra-high-speed data and voice services.

“Our community has blossomed in the past several years, as we have introduced DSL, and then fiber, to the area — which has attracted a number of businesses, including spring training baseball stadiums, large corporate offices for national brands, and the local casino,” says Shane Gregory, director of operations for Saddleback Communications. “We have partnered with Calix throughout this network transformation, which has helped us keep up with the latest technologies and become more operationally efficient. As we introduce the E7-20 into our network, the platform’s flexibility will allow us to roll out a wide variety of new services over fiber, while still giving us capacity to continue to grow well into the future.”

To accommodate the growth in its business customer base, Saddleback overhauled its network five years ago, replacing its entire outside plant infrastructure, from the central office through the customer premises. Throughout the process, it continued to extend the reach of its fiber access network, first with the Calix C7, then with the E7-2, and now with the E7-20. Moving forward, Saddleback Communications will continue to take point-to-point gigabit Ethernet into residential areas, which range in geography from suburban neighborhoods to rural ranches and farms.

“At Calix, we continue to build access innovations optimized for service providers to address the specific needs of their business customers,” says John Colvin, Calix senior vice president of North American sales and marketing. “Specialized business services are a huge potential source of revenues for our service provider customers across the country. Companies like Saddleback Communications, who are committed to delivering targeted services and packages for their business subscribers also drive economic development opportunities to their communities by attracting new businesses to the area, while also bringing in these new revenue streams.”

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NH FastRoads partnered with Network New Hampshire Now (NNHN), a 470-mile, stimulus-funded fiber network project, to leverage its infrastructure to bring advanced broadband services throughout the Upper Valley and Monadnock regions, including fiber-to-the-premises projects in the towns of Rindge and Enfield. The combined efforts of NH FastRoads and NNHN are designed to keep rural western New Hampshire a vibrant location for innovative businesses, citizens and educational institutions.

A limited liability company of the Monadnock Economic Development Corporation, NH FastRoads was established to bring accessible, affordable broadband to the Monadnock and Upper Valley regions of New Hampshire. The organization’s work will enable delivery of voice telephony, IPTV, movies on demand, business-class videoconferencing, health care services such as in-home monitoring, home and business security, computer backup, public access television, Internet radio, and many other advanced services.

Powerful Tool for Economic Development
“New Hampshire as a whole has been underserved by broadband for years, with large portions of our population having to rely on dial-up and wireless services,” says Carole Monroe, executive director of NH FastRoads. “This new fiber network will be a powerful tool to further the economic development of the state that began with the NNHN middle-mile project, while continuing to improve the lives of our existing residents and businesses and attract new business to the area. Calix, with its broad experience with fiber access networks and deep understanding of stimulus projects, will be a true asset in the delivery of advanced services to residents and the extension of fiber across the region.”

Design Nine provided the network design and project management for the effort. Design Nine’s President, Andrew Cohill, says, “We evaluated equipment from many vendors, and in the end, Calix had the most capable equipment and the most attractive technical support package. We’re glad to have Calix powering FastRoads’ gigabit-to-the-home network.”

‘Exactly What the Broadband Stimulus Program Was Designed to Be’
“With the construction of some middle-mile broadband stimulus projects already coming to a completion, we are beginning to see a natural extension of these anchor institution-focused networks to target residences and businesses, just as NH FastRoads is undergoing in New Hampshire,” says John Colvin, senior vice president of North American sales and marketing. “This kind of project is exactly what the broadband stimulus program was designed to be — a catalyst for long-term broadband expansion and economic development in each region awarded.”

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One of 37 universities across the country involved in the Gig.U initiative, which aims to bring ultra-high-speed networks outside the university walls and into the surrounding communities, Case Western Reserve will deploy fiber in and around its Cleveland, Ohio, campus and use Calix
E7-2 and 716GE-I indoor optical network terminals (ONTs) to enable a network capable of delivering
up to 1 Gbps to subscribers. This fiber access network will also deploy Calix’s Compass Flow Analyzer software to monitor and analyze the traffic patterns and applications riding across this network.

Calix is working with integrator partner Gigabit Squared as it pioneers new models for public-private partnerships. Information, knowledge, and lessons learned about this deployment will be analyzed and shared by Case Western Reserve, Calix, and Gigabit Squared, whose Gigabit Neighborhood Gateway Program was announced on May 23 in support of the Gig.U initiative.

“As research organizations, universities are in the unique position to create the ideas and make the
discoveries that will drive the future development of our communities and our country as a whole –
making them an ideal place to deploy and experiment with gigabit fiber networks,” says Case Western Reserve CIO Lev Gonick. “Case Western Reserve has always been on the leading edge of technology – we were the first university to have an all-fiber access network in 1989 – and our work with Gig.U showcases our continued commitment to the advancement of broadband technologies. Throughout the growth of this gigabit network, we are looking forward to working with Calix to learn more about what advanced applications will emerge as students, residents, businesses, and anchor institutions experience the full benefits of the broadband speeds now available to them.”

First Deployment: Judson Retirement Community
The first area targeted for deployment of this gigabit network by Case Western Reserve will be the
award-winning retirement community of Judson at University Circle, a not-for-profit organization that provides housing and care programs for residents.

According to Gonick, the Judson deployment, which will begin this summer, is a research project that will provide connectivity for 136 residents in addition to some of the residence’s common areas. The network will be owned and operated by the university for the period of the research project and will not be open to other service providers for the time being. Case Western operates another small gigabit FTTH network for research purposes, which it calls the Case Connection Zone beta block. The core learning from the beta block project, Gonick says, was the importance of focusing research on a specific population — and this informed the choice of the Judson retirement community as the next deployment.

Even though Case Western and Cleveland are part of Gig.U (and Gonick has been one of the driving forces in getting Gig.U established), this project is somewhat different than the other projects contemplated under Gig.U — including the Gigabit Neighborhood Gateway Program announced yesterday. In general, Gig.U is focused on negotiating with private network deployers to build advanced networks in university communities. In this case, the university itself is doing the building. Nevertheless, Gonick says, “This is a research project that advances both the spirit and direct purpose of the Gig.U initiative.”

The Judson subscribers will be able to test a number of advanced broadband services; a particular area of focus will be telemedicine, medication monitoring, and virtual medical care and nursing services because of the project’s close proximity to the Bruening Health Center at
Judson Park. This gigabit network will offer more than just connectivity; it will have the ability to improve the quality of service and increase access to a wide variety of advanced broadband health care applications.

“In the past few years, we have made important strides in the delivery of gigabit services and
applications across the country, but there is still much work to be done,” says David Seda, vice
president of field marketing at Calix. “By working with innovative organizations such as Gig.U and Case Western Reserve, Calix wants to accelerate this momentum and deliver on the promise of gigabit-enabled communities. With the breadth of the Calix Unified Access portfolio and our proven track record in bringing gigabit speeds to communities worldwide, we’re excited to continue to help
consumers, institutions, and businesses across the country experience the power of gigabit-enabled
applications and services.”

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As service providers migrate from SONET to Ethernet, delivery of profitable services such as T1 require PWE to ensure a seamless migration. With the introduction of the DS1-12 PWE and T1-8 PWE line cards to North America’s most widely deployed MSAP, service providers using the C7 for high-density aggregation of T1 lines for mobile backhaul and business services can now leverage the same MSAP to deliver these services using PWE, enabling an operationally and capitally efficient evolution to IP.

“As we continue to deploy our fiber-to-the-premises broadband stimulus network, T1 services remain a crucial component of our buildout,” says Ron McCue, chief operating officer of Idaho- and Wyoming-based service provider Silver Star Communications. “We deployed our first C7 in 2006, and by utilizing the transformational power of the Calix C7, complemented by these new pseudowire aggregation cards, we now have the ability to bring these T1s and DS1s into an entirely IP infrastructure. This provides the potential for significant efficiencies in our network, keeps our access network under one management system and gives us one high-density platform with the carrier-grade features my customers expect.”

Built to support both Ethernet and SONET transport, the Calix C7 MSAP provides an efficient platform for network evolution from legacy to IP services and also reduces costs and management complexity in networks.

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The five providers are

- Clear Lake Independent Telephone Company (CL Tel) of northern Iowa. CL Tel is using a $7.9 million BIP award to bring ultra-high-speed data, voice and IPTV services to previously unserved subscribers in the Clear Lake and Ventura area, as well as to improve the service of existing subscribers. CL Tel is planning to deploy gigabit Ethernet services on the Calix E7-20 Multi-Terabit Ethernet Services Platform (ESAP).

“As the local service provider, our business is an essential part of the local economy of our rural community here in northern Iowa,” says Tom Lovell, general manager at CL Tel. “We have worked for years with the community government agencies and school district to ensure they had the broadband services needed to keep the area thriving. With this broadband stimulus funding, we can now further that commitment to the residents of the area by bringing one of the nation’s most advanced fiber access networks [to] the citizens of our region.”

- Castle Cable TV. This company’s $7.2 million award, split evenly between a loan and a grant, will bring advanced broadband services over GPON to several communities in Jefferson and St. Lawrence counties of New York.

- Monroe Telephone Company. With a $5.7 million award, Monroe is providing high-speed data services to unserved areas of Lane and Benton counties in rural Oregon.

- Spruce Knob Seneca Rocks Telephone (SKSRT). SKSRT will use an $8.5 million award to deploy a new fiber access network, with supporting wireless infrastructure to provide broadband service in Pendleton and Pocahontas Counties in West Virginia.

- Warm Springs Telecommunications Company. A $5.4 million award will enable the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs to build a hybrid fiber and fixed wireless telecommunications company to serve the 1,000 square miles of the Warm Springs Reservation in Oregon. This tribally owned company will bring landline telephone and Internet services to all residents, government agencies and businesses on the reservation. The fiber network will also connect a number of anchor institutions, including Tribal Administration, the public safety radio towers, Kah Nee Ta resort, and the new Indian Head Casino.

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nDanville began delivering service across three counties beginning in the fall of 2007. This network has been a pioneer in municipal broadband, honored for three consecutive years as a Smart21 award winner by the Intelligent Community Forum. The 500-square-mile network not only has delivered services to local residents and businesses but also serves city-owned utilities and the Danville public schools. The schools, which were connected in the first phase of the nDanville network build, benefit from speeds of up to 1 Gbps, some of the fastest speeds available in the country. Throughout the history of the nDanville network, the entire project has been self-funded, relying solely on revenues brought in by the city.

“Danville is a city in transition, retraining our workforce from declining industries such as textiles and tobacco, and looking to differentiate ourselves from other cities in our region to attract new business to the area,” says Jason Grey, broadband network manager for nDanville. “With our city’s self-funded, open access network, we have been able to attract over 140 business customers to date and will be expanding to reach nearly 44,000 subscribers in the future. As this expansion continues, the flexibility of the E7-2 platform and Calix leadership in the fiber-to-the-home market will be assets for us and will help us to quickly reach a new set of potential subscribers and service provider partners.”

Along with the City of Danville, Calix recently partnered with two other innovative municipalities that are bringing advanced broadband services to their communities.

• The town of Olds in Alberta, Canada, has begun deploying a communitywide GPON network using the Calix E7-20 ESAP and 716GE-I indoor ONTs. Spearheaded by the Olds Institute for Community & Regional Development and other community leaders, this town of 8,000 residents will deploy the first all-fiber municipal network in Canada. Olds will offer advanced voice and broadband services, including an advanced IPTV service.

• Indianola Municipal Utilities in Iowa will deploy a point-to-point gigabit Ethernet (GE) network to the 15,000 residents of the city using the Calix B6 Ethernet Service Access Nodes (ESANs) and 700GE family of ONTs, expanding upon its existing network which delivers high-speed data and voice services to more than 70 commercial and public subscribers. As part of the network’s open access license model, MCG of Oskaloosa, Iowa, a CLEC with a long history of successful fiber deployments, is licensed to utilize Indianola’s municipally-owned infrastructure. Indianola Municipal Utilities owns the infrastructure, and MCG will build and operate the network as well as provide cobranded advanced voice, video and high-speed data services.

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The Broadband Linking the American Samoa Territory (BLAST) Project is funded by the Rural Utilities Service through a $91 million broadband stimulus award — a combined grant and loan to cover engineering, materials, labor, equipment and other costs. BLAST will transform the islands’ legacy copper network into an advanced FTTP infrastructure. ASTCA plans to build this new network with the Ethernet eXtensible Architecture (EXA) Powered Calix access equipment, including C7 Multiservice Access Platform (MSAP) and E7 Ethernet Service Access Platforms (ESAPs), as well as the 700GE family of optical network terminals (ONTs). The Calix Professional Services team will serve as the program manager for the BLAST Project, working with key members of Calix Compatible Solutions Assurance Program to manage the various components of the network build while providing network engineering, furnishing, and installation services.

More than 11,500 residences, businesses, and anchor institutions will be served by this network, which will deliver ultra-high-speed data, next-generation voice services and new IPTV services across the islands. As part of its program management, Calix is coordinating a multivendor partnership to bring a complete IPTV solution, from hardware to content, to ASTCA. As the project progresses, Calix will be working closely with Mid-State Consultants to drive an aggressive schedule of completing central office construction by the end of 2012.

FTTP to Enable Early Warnings for Tsunamis
“The BLAST project will forever change the way of life for the residents, businesses and visitors of American Samoa, bringing to our subscribers a world-class broadband services infrastructure and furthering economic development across the islands,” says Aleki Sene Sr., executive director of ASTCA. “Beyond advanced services, this state-of-the-art fiber access network will also greatly improve our ability to provide emergency services.”

The only part of the United States located south of the equator, American Samoa had many of its remote islands devastated by a tsunami after an 8.0 magnitude earthquake in the Pacific Ocean in September 2009. With this new fiber network in place, ASTCA will be better able to withstand extreme weather conditions, enable advanced early warning systems and provide reliable services to the country’s anchor institutions, including local government offices, as well as businesses and residents.

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Co-Mo and United are both deploying the Calix E7-2 Ethernet Service Access Platform (ESAP) with GPON technology in the central office and using the 700GE family of optical network terminals (ONTs) at customer premises. Both companies will offer high-speed data and voice services over their fiber access networks, and, because both are committed to furthering economic development in their respective communities, they also plan to consider telemedicine and distance learning applications in the future for local schools and health care institutions.

Calix, which has helped hundreds of telephone companies deploy fiber to the home, is now working with several electric cooperatives, including not only Co-Mo and United but also others such as Arrowhead Electric in Minnesota, as they bring broadband services and new opportunities for economic development to their communities.

Because their customers have been overlooked by traditional broadband service providers in their regions, these companies have taken matters into their own hands to leverage their existing networks and operational infrastructures to become advanced broadband service providers. Their broadband projects are natural extensions of the grid modernization initiatives they already have under way. In addition, their existing utility poles and experienced outside-plant staff can be readily leveraged to deliver broadband services over fiber. Ultimately, grid modernization and communications services efforts are extremely complementary.

Economic and Community Development Driven By Fiber Networks
After determining that satellite and wireless broadband services did not meet their members’ needs and after being turned down for broadband stimulus funding, Co-Mo embarked on a self-funded fiber access project in 2011. The cooperative began by reaching out to its members, going door to door to sign up early registrants for its Co-Mo Connect service.

Within a few months, Co-Mo exceeded expectations for early registrants, and, within the first year of marketing the service, the company signed up 30 percent of all eligible member premises in two pilot areas. Now near completion of the two pilot network builds, Co-Mo hopes to continue to expand across its serving area throughout 2012, offering residential broadband packages with speeds up to 35 Mbps and more advanced packages for business customers.

“In rural Missouri, we must find every opportunity to keep our community thriving and competitive with urban areas,” says Ken Johnson, general manager and CEO at Co-Mo. “With this fiber access network, every member of our cooperative will benefit, from recent graduates who can now work from home, to businesses that can take advantage of tailored, high-bandwidth packages, and schools and hospitals that can collaborate with other institutions. Calix has been a true partner in this build to date, with us every step of the way as we revitalize this rural community, much the way we did by turning on the lights with electricity in the 1940s.”

Just north of Co-Mo, United Electric is now deploying a fiber network funded by a $21.2 million broadband stimulus award. With more than 1,350 miles of fiber to deploy, United plans to bring advanced broadband services to more than 4,200 residences and 58 anchor institutions. Along with high-speed data and voice services, United will also offer video packages. With an infrastructure capable of offering broadband services up to 1 Gbps, United can support additional smart home and video based services in the future.

“At United, we serve a very large area with a low subscriber density, but within our member base we found a huge need for true broadband services,” says Gene Dorrel, general manager at United. “Prior to our fiber project, 79 percent of our members had computers, but lacked adequate broadband. With our commitment to our members and history of being dedicated to our community, it was clear that United could be a vehicle for change. By partnering with Calix and their great track record in rural markets, we are confident we will improve the lives and businesses of our members.”

See Calix videos about Co-Mo and United here.

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• The E7-20 GPON-8x — With eight ports per card, the GPON-8x line card doubles the GPON port capacity of the E7-20 ESAP platform, allowing service providers to efficiently serve more than 10,000 GPON subscribers from a single chassis with a 64-way split. The E7-20′s 2 terabit backplane and non-blocking throughput capacity, combined with the company’s 700GE family of ONTs, allows any subscriber to receive up to 1 Gbps of downstream or upstream capacity, enabling a vast array of potential service options.

• The B6-318 — This card features advanced, high-density, point-to-point Gigabit Ethernet technology, with 24 compact small form-factor pluggable (CSFP) ports that can serve 48 subscribers per card with symmetrical high-speed data services up to 1 Gbps. The B6-318 seamlessly connects to the 700GE family of ONTs and features two industry-standard 10 Gigabit small form-factor pluggable (XFP) ports and two SFP+ 10GE/GE ports.

The first deployment announced for the two new cards was WestStar TV in the Cayman Islands. Jeremy Elmas, vice president of WestStar TV, comments, “The E7-20 and the GPON-8x card will provide us with flexibility we need to bring advanced GPON as well as point-to-point gigabit Ethernet technologies and the capability to provide up to 1 Gbps of broadband service capacity to any subscriber on the network. The Calix equipment allows WestStar room to grow its product and service offerings for years to come, and we look forward to working with Calix and bringing truly advanced broadband services to our subscribers.”

“With the continual introduction of new fiber access innovations, and the addition of ambitious new fiber-focused customers like WestStar TV, Calix continues to raise the bar in fiber access excellence,” says John Colvin, Calix senior vice president of North America sales and marketing. “Wireline service providers continue their march towards an all-fiber future, using the replacement of copper with fiber to implement powerful new business and service models. Calix is proud to be a key enabler of this transformation and looks forward to continued acceleration of this trend in the years to come as our service provider customers deliver the most advanced broadband services to consumers and businesses across the globe.”

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