Zhone Adds EFM to Platform for Fiber Migration Path

Oakland, CA — Access network equipment supplier Zhone Technologies announced Ethernet in the First Mile (EFM)  line cards for its flagship MXK multiservice access platform. Zhone also said it had shipped more than 325 MXK systems since announcing the platform just over two quarters ago, with growth of its global customer base to 750 telecom providers worldwide.

Migration Path to Fiber

By 2014, as many as 5 billion personal devices will be connecting to mobile networks worldwide, and the number of cell site base stations in the United States is projected to grow from 200,000 to 300,000. While fiber has made considerable inroads over the past year, approximately two-thirds of radio access nodes are still copper fed.

Even if operators can afford to run fiber to every tower, the required labor will take years. The operators' best strategy is to fiber-connect those towers with the most traffic and retain copper connections to those where traffic is growing least. EFM offers a way to increase bandwidth over copper compared with traditional T1/E1 connections, while realizing the enormous cost savings inherent to native Ethernet.

Zhone’s IEEE 802.3ah standard 24-port line card for the MXK enables operators currently served by T1/E1 to upgrade to EFM services while ensuring a ready migration path to fiber. Zhone’s MXK with EFM provides a boost in capacity and investment protection with a built-in migration path to a multiservice terabit-scale fiber access solution.

Zhone chief marketing officer Brian Caskey says that adding EFM to the MXK platform allows providers to support a variety of services from the same platform. "They don’t have to upgrade every cell site at the same time," he notes. "Small geographies that don't justify bringing in a backhoe to roll in fiber may stay on EFM for the foreseeable future." Busier cell sites, along with business districts and other areas where fiber to the premises makes economic sense, can be upgraded to fiber while sites experiencing lower demand can make the best use of their existing copper.

The MXK-EFM-SHDSL-24 Port Card

• Delivers up to 45.6 Mbps to a single end user


• Delivers up to 13 Mbps per copper pair


• Provides IP QoS, traffic shaping and dynamic bandwidth allocation


• Enables touchless EFM provisioning via Zhone’s Multi-Service Access Operating System Software.