10 February 2014 Download this Press Release

Targeting the rural mobile backhaul challenges faced by service providers, Ekinops, a leading supplier of next-generation optical transport solutions, is introducing a cost-effective, long-reach optical solution. It offers high backhaul capacity while requiring minimum space and minimum power, with the ability to operate in extreme temperatures and harsh environments.

"Remote cell sites rarely have the amenities of urban and metro sites, but they still must support 3G and 4G services," said François Xavier Ollivier, Chief Operating Officer of Ekinops. "Space, power, and cooling/heating are particular challenges, so it is critical for service providers to have access to transport solutions that can function in these tough environments and make the best use of limited space."

That is the approach EKINOPS is taking with its rural backhaul solutions, built around the capabilities of its EKINOPS 360 multi-purpose transport system. They address the issue of space constraints by maximizing the performance and capacity in either a 1RU or 2RU system. They operate with -48V DC or +24V AC power feeds and consume very little power, or even no power in situations where sites require only a passive solution.

The EKINOPS equipment is also certified for Extended Temperature Range (ETR) operations from -40 to +65 degrees Celsius, or -40 to 149 degrees Fahrenheit. The EKINOPS 360 ETR products that have already been deployed in large quantities include the 2RU C200 chassis, management, optical amplifiers and supervision modules, add-drop multiplexers, and dispersion compensation modules.

"Rural markets are helping drive the growth in mobile data and voice traffic, but because of the economics in these areas, it is essential that service providers find cost-effective solutions," said Ollivier. “Very few equipment vendors provide what it takes, such as ETR products that can be deployed deeper into the rural network, where backhaul is complicated by distance, limited facilities, extreme temperatures, and other operational issues."

EKINOPS has designed the backhaul solution to support a range of architectures, from hub-and-spoke to ring, tree, mesh, or a combination. The same solution can also be leveraged to support other new or existing applications, such as backhauling residential and commercial traffic and high-capacity enterprise services. Like all EKINOPS products, it is built around the T-Chip (Transport-on-a-Chip) technology, with multiple functions and features combined onto a single programmable chip, reducing power needs while improving performance. The EKINOPS 360 is 100G capable, so it is a long-term solution as capacity needs continue to grow.

In areas where there is a great distance between cell sites, EKINOPS' backhaul solution features DynaFEC, dynamic forward error correction technology, eliminating transmission errors and the need for signal regeneration facilities. In addition, EKINOPS offers design, planning, and deployment services to insure optimal performance and minimize the need for technician trips to the cell sites.


About Ekinops

EKINOPS is a leading provider of open and fully interoperable Layer 1, 2 and 3 solutions to service providers around the world. Our programmable and highly scalable solutions enable the fast, flexible and cost-effective deployment of new services for both high-speed, high-capacity optical transport as well as virtualization-enabled managed enterprise services.

Our product portfolio consists of three highly complementary product and service sets: EKINOPS 360, OneAccess and Compose. EKINOPS 360 provides optical transport solutions for metro, regional and long-distance networks with WDM for high-capacity point-to-point, ring and optical mesh architectures, and OTN for improved bandwidth utilization and efficient multi-service aggregation.

OneAccess offers a wide choice of physical and virtualized deployment options for Layer 2 and Layer 3 access network functions.

Compose supports service providers in making their networks software-defined with a variety of software management tools and services, including the scalable SD-WAN Xpress. As service providers embrace SDN and NFV deployment models, EKINOPS enables future-proofed deployment today, enabling operators to seamlessly migrate to an open, virtualized delivery model at a time of their choosing.

A global organization, EKINOPS (EKI) - a public company traded on the Euronext Paris exchange - is headquartered in Lannion, France, and EKINOPS Corp., a wholly-owned subsidiary, is incorporated in the USA.

EKI Euronext

Name : EKINOPS
ISIN Code : FR0011466069
Mnemonic code : EKI
Number of shares: 5 093 361