"As the telecom sector continues to evolve, strategic partnerships such as this new agreement between ECI Telecom and Italtel, will be critical for the success of telecom equipment suppliers, especially in an increasingly competitive and mature market. ECI brings a best-in-class Access platform in the Hi-FOCuS portfolio and a leading multi-service transport platform in the XDM, while Italtel brings an impressive presence in EMEA and Latin America, as well as valuable expertise in system integration, voice over IP and mobility. This partnership makes perfect business and technology sense," said Erik M. Keith, Principal Analyst for Broadband Infrastructure at Current Analysis.

"The partnership with Italtel strengthens our presence in important and growing international markets. With our access and transport portfolio, Italtel will be able to provide their customers with high-end platforms that are optimized for next-generation evolution. In Italtel, we have found a partner with the required ability and expertise that are complementary to our own, in addition to a strong and recognised specialisation in system integration," said Tony Scarfo, Head of Global Channel Sales, and Partners of ECI Telecom.

"The agreement with ECI is part of our plan to develop into specific foreign markets and to widen the perimeter of our products and services," said Claudio Chiarenza, Head of Planning, Marketing & Business Development of Italtel. "This partnership allows us to extend our portfolio of solutions for service providers in the EMEA and Latin America markets with products for access and optical transport, and to adopt a structured approach to a market segment that is potentially attractive, represented by European service providers and utilities with their own network infrastructure."

The partnership between Italtel and ECI Telecom will cover the integration and customisation, at the customers' premises, of ECI's Multi-Service Access Node (MSAN) Hi-FOCuS, and the metro edge BroadGate line of products. The Hi-FOCuS supports voice, data and video over one, converged IP platform, while the BroadGate line is an advanced multi-service provisioning platform for the transporting of data streams over fibre optic in metropolitan networks.

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"As the telecom sector continues to evolve, strategic partnerships such as this new agreement between ECI Telecom and Italtel, will be critical for the success of telecom equipment suppliers, especially in an increasingly competitive and mature market. ECI brings a best-in-class Access platform in the Hi-FOCuS portfolio and a leading multi-service transport platform in the XDM, while Italtel brings an impressive presence in EMEA and Latin America, as well as valuable expertise in system integration, voice over IP and mobility. This partnership makes perfect business and technology sense," said Erik M. Keith, Principal Analyst for Broadband Infrastructure at Current Analysis.

"The partnership with Italtel strengthens our presence in important and growing international markets. With our access and transport portfolio, Italtel will be able to provide their customers with high-end platforms that are optimized for next-generation evolution. In Italtel, we have found a partner with the required ability and expertise that are complementary to our own, in addition to a strong and recognised specialisation in system integration," noted Tony Scarfo, Head of Global Channel Sales, and Partners of ECI Telecom.

"The agreement with ECI is part of our plan to develop into specific foreign markets and to widen the perimeter of our products and services," commented Claudio Chiarenza, Head of Planning, Marketing & Business Development of Italtel. "This partnership allows us to extend our portfolio of solutions for service providers in the EMEA and Latin America markets with products for access and optical transport, and to adopt a structured approach to a market segment that is potentially attractive, represented by European service providers and utilities with their own network infrastructure."

The partnership between Italtel and ECI Telecom will cover the integration and customisation, at the customers' premises, of ECI's Multi-Service Access Node (MSAN) Hi-FOCuS(TM), and the metro edge BroadGate(R) line of products. The Hi-FOCuS supports voice, data and video over one, converged IP platform, while the BroadGate line is an advanced multi-service provisioning platform for the transporting of data streams over fibre optic in metropolitan networks.

Market Background

Despite the economic downturn, which caused capex to decline in 2009, with service providers putting on hold some of their major infrastructure investments, the telecom market still remains one of the most dynamic and competitive sectors in today's world, as subscribers and network traffic keep growing. Service providers face many challenges -- the need to migrate to IP networks, the blurring of boundaries between different types of providers, the demand for advanced services, in addition to lower margins, reduced revenues and increased competition. According to Infonetics Research, service providers today are transforming into vertically integrated multimedia providers.

Infonetics expects broadband and corporate traffic to continue to grow, as IP video, IPTV and personalization of services take hold. IPTV traffic patterns will cause a continual push for more network capacity over the years. There is increased adoption of broadband data services and of mobile telephony and data traffic.

"Worldwide, we expect over 600M fixed broadband subscribers in 2013. Much of this growth is coming from emerging markets, such as China, Southeast Asia, and Russia, as more mature markets in Japan, Korea, North America and Western Europe reach saturation," said Michael Howard, Principal Analyst, Infonetics Research. "Subscribers are attracted to new services brought on by broadband investment in IP video, including IPTV, broadcast TV, video-on-demand, HDTV, network PVR, online gaming, music downloads, video telephony, and home automation and security services."

Worldwide telco IPTV subscribers reached 26M in CY08 and are expected to grow to 155M by CY13, as operators rely on video services to increase ARPU and to retain fixed broadband subscribers. Fixed broadband services have some of the highest margins of any services offered, which is why layering on "sticky" services like IPTV is so critical to their bundling efforts.

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TAGS/Keywords

Italtel, ECI Telecom, Global Partner Program, System Integration, VoIP, NGN, IPTV, 3G Wireless, Quadruple Play, transport, access, metro networks, Multi-Service Provisioning Platform, MSPP, Carrier Ethernet, Multi-Service Access Node (MSAN), Hi-FOCuS, BroadGate (BG)

The Italtel Group

Italtel designs, develops, implements solutions for Next-Generation Networks and Services, based on the Internet Protocol (IP). Italtel provides proprietary products, systems, and solutions; Professional Services dedicated to the design, development, maintenance of telecommunication networks; IT System Integration Services (BSS, CRM, Saas, Data Center Consolidation, Integrated Network Security); Network Integration activities, in terms of third party products and technologies customization and software development for the creation of new Web 2.0 services, for IP Unified Communication design and deployment.

Born in 1921, Italtel has designed and implemented telecommunication networks that are among the most innovative worldwide and counts among its customers more than 40 of the world's top TLC Operators and Service Providers. In Italy Italtel is also reference partner of Enterprises and Public Sector for the deployment of IP Next-Generation Networks and for the development of multimedia convergent services for their customers.

Italtel has around 2,200 employees; almost half of them are D&I specialists. Italtel is present in 25 countries including France, UK, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Russia, Poland, Argentina, Brazil, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia. Italtel's headquarters are in Milan (Italy) with R&D Labs in Milan and Palermo. Sales offices are in Rome. Website: www.italtel.com

About ECI Telecom

ECI Telecom delivers innovative communications platforms to carriers and service providers worldwide. ECI provides efficient platforms and solutions that enable customers to rapidly deploy cost-effective, revenue-generating services.

Founded in 1961, Israel-based ECI has consistently delivered customer-focused networking solutions to the world's largest carriers. The Company is also a market leader in many emerging markets. ECI provides scalable broadband access, transport and data networking infrastructure that provides the foundation for the communications of tomorrow, including next-generation voice, IPTV, mobility and other business solutions. For more information, please visit www.ecitele.com.

Certain statements contained in this release may contain forward-looking information with respect to plans, projections or future performance of the Company. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve certain risks and uncertainties including, but not limited to, product and market acceptance risks, the impact of competitive pricing, product development, commercialization and technological difficulties as well as other risks.

SOURCE: Italtel ECI Telecom

Italtel Communications 
Laura Borlenghi 
Tel.: +39 02 4388 5275 
Mobile: +39 335 769 4240 
E-mail: laura.borlenghi@italtel.it 
or 
ECI Telecom 
Sandra Welfeld 
T: +972 3 928 7283 
sandra.welfeld@ecitele.com 
or 
Fran Bosecker 
Vantage Communications 
T: +1 845-536-1416 
fbosecker@pr-vantage.com

- Network Design -- The Network Design service helps operators introduce new services and improve time-to-market while avoiding high-cost disruptive migrations. This service helps network operators assess and design an optimum network architecture that addresses operational as well as strategic growth requirements.

- Network Audit -- ECI's Network Audit service enables service providers to continuously analyze and track changes in existing network elements, without compromising future plans for design and installation of new elements. The Network Audit service delivers a view of the provider's network infrastructure and equipment to facilitate the decision-making process and greatly improve resource planning, utilization and allocation.

- Traffic Analysis and Optimization -- ECI's Traffic Analysis and Optimization service brings ease of operation to the day-to-day monitoring of critical metrics relating to network stability, capacity and utilization. It provides in-depth traffic analysis and enables the necessary fine-tuning for optimal network performance and investment protection.

To support these services, ECI relies on a set of innovative software tools that brings network planning, auditing and traffic analysis to a new level:

1. Network Design Platform (NDP) -- ECI's new, vendor-agnostic planning and design tool supports multiple technologies, such as fiber, WDM, TDM, Ethernet and MPLS. In line with ECI's commitment to an evolutionary network approach, this tool is optimized for handling the migration to an all-IP network, reducing single points of failure and bottlenecks along the network, and optimizing network resources utilization.

2. LightPlan -- Developed for WDM network planning, simulation and documentation, ECI's LightPlan enables efficient and streamlined network planning workflows and uniform views of all network layers, technologies and platforms in use.

3. Site Planner -- ECI's Site Planner provides configuration and documentation for all the network elements in ECI's product portfolio.

These services and tools deliver increased network design flexibility, reducing risks and enabling carriers to achieve maximum performance with minimal spending. By discovering hidden bandwidth, carriers can defer CAPEX spending and optimize existing network investments, improving their network for optimal transition to IP, a key principle of ECI's 1Net framework for optimized and simplified migration to next-generation networks, and increasing network efficiency and reliability.

"Our Network Design and Optimization offerings bring together ECI's team of services experts and a comprehensive and highly flexible suite of tools for customers who need more capacity without over-extending existing resources to expand or develop their networks. As carriers increasingly look to outsource short and long-term projects, with ECI's services and tools, they can save on OPEX, delay CAPEX, maximize usage of their existing network and prepare for an optimal migration to next-gen at their own pace, the ultimate definition of 1Net," said Eran Talmon, Head of the Global Services Division of ECI Telecom.

In India, Vodafone Essar Ltd. has selected ECI to perform in-depth network analysis and consultancy services. With the Network Design Platform (NDP), ECI identified key areas for optimization and laid out a plan for a smooth, efficient migration to NGN.

***

Visit ECI at Supercomm, Meeting Room No. MR1014

Links Follow ECI Telecom news updates on Twitter at twitter.com/ecitelecom Become a fan of ECITelecom on Facebook Network Design and Optimization services on ecitele.com Network Design service brochure Network Audit service brochure Traffic Analysis and Optimization service brochure Network Design Platform brochure Vodafone Essar Ltd. case study

About ECI Telecom ECI Telecom delivers innovative communications platforms to carriers and service providers worldwide. ECI provides efficient platforms and solutions that enable customers to rapidly deploy cost-effective, revenue-generating services.

Founded in 1961, Israel-based ECI has consistently delivered customer-focused networking solutions to the world's largest carriers. The Company is also a market leader in many emerging markets. ECI provides scalable broadband access, transport and data networking infrastructure that provides the foundation for the communications of tomorrow, including next-generation voice, IPTV, mobility and other business solutions. For more information, please visit www.ecitele.com.

Certain statements contained in this release may contain forward-looking information with respect to plans, projections or future performance of the Company. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve certain risks and uncertainties including, but not limited to, product and market acceptance risks, the impact of competitive pricing, product development, commercialization and technological difficulties as well as other risks.

About ECI's 1Net ECI's 1Net framework defines our focus on facilitating our customer's optimal transition to Next-Generation Networks. This is based on the unique combination of innovative and multi-functional networking equipment extending from the access to the core of transport networks, fully integrated solutions and a full suite of professional managed services. As a partner for growth, with 1Net, ECI delivers the highest level of cost-effective support and flexibility for carriers today and in the future, resulting in improved time to market for services and offerings, reduced total cost of ownership and increased business performance.

SOURCE: ECI Telecom

ECI Telecom 
Sandra Welfeld 
T: +972 3 928 7283 
sandra.welfeld@ecitele.com 
or 
Vantage Communications 
Fran Bosecker 
T: +1 845-536-1416 
fbosecker@pr-vantage.com

"For years, the high cost of FTTH implementation has hindered widespread adoption of GPON or point-to-point fiber access networks, making it extremely expensive -- even for leading operators -- to deliver advanced service bundles increasingly demanded by customers. But iSMART's successful leveraging of DSM L3 technology makes VDSL a far more viable and cost effective choice for operators who are still not ready to migrate their access networks to full-fiber end-to-end FTTH systems," said Erik M. Keith, Principal Analyst for Broadband Infrastructure at Current Analysis.

According to the 2Q09 'Broadband Aggregation Hardware and Subscribers' report from Infonetics, between 2009 and 2013 the number of worldwide VDSL subscribers will increase by 45%. Although the growth of PON FTTH subscribers will continue to grow, VDSL will unquestionably play an important role in the future strategy of high-speed broadband providers through the next decade.

DSM L3 technology could lead to a significant change in the economics of high volume DSL traffic. By enabling operators to multiply the range and speed of VDSL2 equipment, DSM can translate into significant savings in capital investment. Taking advantage of existing infrastructure, operators who implement DSM technology can profitably provision more valuable high-speed broadband services to residential and business customers.

"Today, we have truly revolutionized DSL with the world's first demonstration of the iSMART Consortium's DSM L3 technology. We are addressing operators' needs for increased competitiveness and cost-effectiveness in today's challenging marketplace," said Ido Shargil, chairman of the iSMART Consortium and head of system engineering at ECI Telecom.

"DSM L3 technology virtually eliminates the most significant source of crosstalk in VDSL2-based networks, enabling cost-effective wide-scale deployment of high-speed, high-value services over existing copper pairs," said Ioannis Kanellakopoulos, PhD, chief technology officer at Actelis Networks. "Actelis is delighted to leverage our extensive crosstalk cancellation experience in the iSMART Consortium, where the technology we and our consortium partners are developing is expected to result in products that deliver an unprecedented combination of rate, reach, and reliability over copper."

The iSMART Consortium was launched at Broadband World Forum 2006 with the goal of developing and commercializing DSM technology. In addition to operators in Israel and Europe, iSMART combines the expertise of leading NGN telecom vendors and academic researchers in algorithm science, digital signal processing and telecommunications. iSMART is backed by the Magnet Program of Israel's Office of the Chief Scientist.

Visit the Broadband World Forum Europe, ECI Telecom booth (#360), to experience a live demo of this breakthrough technology from the iSMART Consortium.

-end-

Links High-resolution graphics are available for download at flickr.com/photos/ecitelecom Follow ECI Telecom news updates on Twitter at twitter.com/ecitelecom Follow Actelis Networks on Twitter at twitter.com/actelis Become a fan of ECI on Facebook

Related news: Oct 10, 2006, "New Broadband Consortium Formed to Develop Next Phase of DSL Technology"

About the iSMART Consortium The iSMART Consortium was established in order to develop and materialize the next generation DSL access technology and solutions, based on Dynamic Spectrum Management (DSM). The consortium is a joint program of leading telecom vendors and senior researchers, together with Israeli and European operators. It is supported by the Magnet program of the Office of the Chief Scientist (OCS) of Israel's Ministry of Trade and Industry. For more information, please visit www.ismart.org.il

About ECI Telecom ECI Telecom delivers innovative communications platforms to carriers and service providers worldwide. ECI provides efficient platforms and solutions that enable customers to rapidly deploy cost-effective, revenue-generating services.

Founded in 1961, Israel-based ECI has consistently delivered customer-focused networking solutions to the world's largest carriers. The Company is also a market leader in many emerging markets. ECI provides scalable broadband access, transport and data networking infrastructure that provides the foundation for the communications of tomorrow, including next-generation voice, IPTV, mobility and other business solutions. For more information, please visit www.ecitele.com.

Certain statements contained in this release may contain forward-looking information with respect to plans, projections or future performance of the Company. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve certain risks and uncertainties including, but not limited to, product and market acceptance risks, the impact of competitive pricing, product development, commercialization and technological difficulties as well as other risks.

About Actelis Networks Founded in 1998 and headquartered in Silicon Valley, California, Actelis Networks is the global market leader in developing and manufacturing Ethernet in the First Mile (EFM) over copper solutions. Built on its patented, standards-based EFMplus(TM) technology, Actelis' Ethernet access systems and repeaters have been deployed by more than 150 customers across 40 countries, delivering unprecedented rate, reach, and reliability over copper access networks. Actelis Networks and the Actelis Networks logo are registered trademarks, and Carrier Ethernet over Copper(TM) and EFMplus is a trademark of Actelis Networks. Learn more at www.actelis.com.

SOURCE: ECI Telecom

ECI Telecom 
Sandra Welfeld 
T: +972 3 928 7283 
sandra.welfeld@ecitele.com 
or 
Actelis Networks 
Chris Heinemann 
T: +1 510-545-1051 
cheinemann@actelis.com 
or 
Vantage Communications 
Fran Bosecker 
T: +1 845-536-1416 
fbosecker@pr-vantage.com