1:20 PM -- BERLIN -- Carrier Ethernet World Forum -- Colt Technology Services Group Ltd CTO Dr. Alireza Mahmoodshahi has been in a generous mood here in Berlin. First of all he gave a boost to the somewhat beleaguered PBT community.

Second, he announced that COLT, a pan-European carrier that is pushing Ethernet services hard to the region's corporate users, is deploying Overture Networks Inc. 's carrier Ethernet demarcation boxes for network-to-network interconnect (NNI), where COLT needs to connect with other carriers' networks and with its enterprise customers.

And that was something of a gift for Overture. "We had no idea he was going to say that -- it came as a shock," said a startled Chip Redden, VP of marketing and product management at Overture.

Overture has previous experience in Europe with Ethernet demarcation -- the vendor's biggest deal in the region to date has been with British operator THUS plc (London: THUS), which is being swallowed up by Cable and Wireless plc (NYSE: CWP). (See THUS Deploys Overture and C&W Offers £329M for THUS.)

The issue of NNI is a big deal in the carrier Ethernet world, and one that Mahmoodshahi has spoken about before. (See ADVA Tackles Ethernet Pain Point, Yipes, KPN Study NNI, COLT CTO: Let's Connect Now!, and Ethernet Mulls Interface Standard.)

— Ray Le Maistre, International News Editor, Light Reading