Calix E7 Delivers "fibredirect" to Ireland's First Fiber Towns

AMSTERDAM — enet, which operates and manages the Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs) — the Irish State's fiber optic infrastructure, has chosen Calix E7-2 Ethernet Service Access Platform (ESAP) and P- and T-Series fiber services gateways for the rollout of the company's "fibredirect" superfast fiber broadband service that targets small and medium-sized businesses in towns and cities throughout Ireland. enet, a private company, which operates fiber optic infrastructure on behalf of the Irish State, has now rolled out its fibredirect service in Claremorris, making that community Ireland's first fiber town, and will soon connect every business in the town directly to the national fiber infrastructure. This open access service will also soon be offered to businesses in three additional towns — Kilkenny, Loughrea, and Ardee — and will help to energize the rural local economies by providing greater connectivity for businesses, increasing their prospects for competitiveness and job creation.

Extending Open Access Infrastructure to ISPs Throughout Ireland
MANs is a wholesale open access telecoms infrastructure with 94 MAN-enabled towns in the Republic of Ireland. The aim of the MANs is to provide a middle-mile infrastructure with high bandwidth capacity to all authorized operators. This model enables operators to sell high-capacity broadband and telephony services to end users such as large corporations. enet already serves the main service providers in the country with open access fiber. The new fibredirect initiative aims to extend the services to local ISPs in towns and cities throughout Ireland and to target the smaller and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in those communities, bringing last mile fiber to businesses and business parks throughout the chosen locations.

Claremorris, in County Mayo in the West of Ireland, is the first community to go live with fiber business connections, as local ISP Airspeed Telecom has delivered speeds of up to 250 megabits per second (Mbps) since late September. enet fibredirect is a 100 percent fiber service, with fiber access infrastructure being delivered directly into premises. enet found the efficiency of GPON's shared infrastructure as the best fiber technology fit for its network. enet determined that the Calix E7-2 ESAP was the best fit due to the E7-2's industry-leading modularity and flexibility, meeting enet's needs for a scalable solution that could go from smaller scale deployments like Claremorris and grow as customer demand increased.

Combining Leading Technology with Local Expertise
Calix is working in partnership with Irish network systems integrator Agile Networks, a networking specialist already supporting 14 of the top 25 ISPs in Ireland. "The Calix portfolio is an excellent fit for enet's needs and we believe introducing this technology into the marketplace will be truly disruptive in allowing greater rollout of fiber services in Ireland. Our partnership with Calix underlines the commitment to combine leading technology with local expertise, which is critical to the success of a national project of this scale and importance," commented Darragh Richardson, managing director of Agile Networks.

Calix Advantage Program is a comprehensive program that combines the key tools and services necessary to manage, maintain, and support each customer's access network. It provides combined network management systems, software upgrades, and technical support across the Calix Unified Access portfolio, which was instrumental in enet's selection of the Calix solution.

"We had looked at a number of vendors to provide a suitable solution for our fibredirect product, and early in the selection process it became clear that the Calix/Agile partnership was the right fit for enet," said Jim Molony, enet's network engineering manager. "With the bundled approach of the Calix Advantage Program, which took out many cost variables, and the straightforward procurement process, it made doing business with Calix and Agile very easy. The scalability options offered with the E7 platform give us the flexibility to grow locations to match rollout needs without disruptive re-provisioning in order to scale up."