ECI Adds GPON

PETAH TIKVA, Israel -- ECI Telecom (NASDAQ: ECIL - News) today announced a series of Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) offerings that easily upgrades ECI's broadband solutions to support Fiber-to-the Home (FTTH), Fiber-to-the Premises (FTTP) and Fiber-to-the Node (FTTN) applications. These new offerings require a minimal upgrade path while providing maximum OPEX and CAPEX savings to carriers for the delivery of bandwidth-intensive video services like IPTV, HDTV and network-based Personal Video Recorder (nPVR).

ECI is the only vendor to offer integrated GPON, xDSL, Gigabit Ethernet and ATM aggregation, Cellular UMTS backhauling and voice, all on a unified management platform. Based on GPON technology, ECI's offerings don't require maintenance or a specific power source, which contributes to OPEX savings. It is also a point-to-multipoint solution and thus doesn't require individual fibers for each point. One single port supports up to 128 FTTH users. ECI's GPON solution is compelling for ILECs and CLECs that are pursuing greenfield and brownfield deployment scenarios using a fiber-based network; or for applications that require maximum bandwidth to support advanced services. ECI is able to rapidly introduce its innovative IP-based GPON solution, as its Hi-FOCuS(TM) platform has been successfully deployed in numerous networks worldwide.

This single-shelf solution eliminates the need to add or replace equipment, making it very attractive for carriers to use optics for delivering high bandwidth applications such as video. The interchangeable GPON-based cards can be implemented in ECI's broadband offerings including its IP-based Hi-FOCuS 5 MSAG and Outside Plant ONU products such as the G-PoweRAM(TM) and MiniShelf(TM), as well as a wide range of ONTs which are designed for customer premises and serve residential and business users.

"We believe our new GPON offering provides operators with unparalleled value for optical networks," said Danny Eisner, Executive Vice President and General Manager of ECI Telecom's Broadband Access Division. "By easily adding to currently installed boxes, operators can offer flexible optical solutions today while keeping costs down and maintaining future expenses."

ECI Telecom Ltd.