Occam Intros Blade

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. -- Occam Networks® Inc. (NASDAQ:OCNW), a leading supplier of innovative Ethernet and IP-based loop carrier equipment to telecommunications companies, introduced today its new Broadband Loop Carrier (BLC) 6450. The BLC 6450 is the telco access equipment market's first 10GbE access aggregation blade, offering scalability and ease of deployment.

Occam will showcase the new BLC 6450 blade at NXTcomm(TM)2007 (Booth 3351), June 18-21, in Chicago.

The BLC 6450 is currently in field trials and is expected to ship in June 2007. It is designed for two applications:

Inter-central office or Access aggregation -- integrating IPTV, multi-service (for example POTS, VOIP, Internet, T1) and mobile backhaul networks

Business access and aggregation - including 10/100/1000 Active Fiber Ethernet, transparent LAN service and EPL or EVPL services as defined by the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF)

The BLC 6450 increases capacity of Ethernet protected access networks by supporting 10 Gigabit optical aggregation rings and subtended subscriber access rings as well as business Ethernet services. When configured in topologies using the Occam patented EPS technology, the BLC 6450 delivers redundancy and reliability comparable to traditional SONET rings with similar bandwidth of an OC-192 at a lower cost.

"Occam understands that as bandwidth demand continues to spiral upward for both businesses and residences, telcos need to rethink their aggregation strategy," said Teresa Mastrangelo, principal analyst with Broadband Trends. "The new BLC 6450 gives telcos a wide range of options for both inter-CO or remote cabinet aggregation as well as business Ethernet access. It enables telcos to get ahead of the bandwidth curve."

The 6450 product can deliver Ethernet services for geographically dispersed businesses. Service providers may offer Transparent LAN Services to corporations, universities and private enterprises using a low cost, scalable solution supporting Ethernet Private Line (EPL) or Ethernet Virtual Private LAN (EVPL), point-to-point or multipoint-to-multipoint, applications across the BLC network. Business Ethernet services may be delivered with up to 1000 protected VLANs available for Transparent LAN Services.

Business Ethernet interfaces enable service providers to transform private lines and virtual private lines from commodity services to fully managed data services based on Carrier Ethernet, providing exceptional value to enterprise customers. The 6450 managed service capabilities create additional revenue opportunities for telcos as enterprises continue to increase their demands for interconnectivity, as well as higher speed connections to the internet.

"Telcos face intense pressure to upgrade their network bandwidth with a flexible aggregation strategy, and a key driver of this is mobile backhaul," said ErikM. Keith,senioranalystfor broadband infrastructure at Current Analysis. "The explosion of music, images, video and social networking content available for both uploading and downloading from mobile devices will strain a telco's ability to ensure high quality backhaul. Occam's new BLC 6450 provides telcos with the necessary bandwidth as well as the flexibility to meet bandwidth needs arising from IPTV and other sources."

"Rapidly increasing bandwidth demands that range from IPTV on landline networks to mobile backhaul of video clips and social networking content are challenging telcos like never before," said Russ Sharer, vice president of marketing for Occam. "As telcos rethink their aggregation strategy, which now must include consideration of FTTH, IPTV, SOHO, xDSL and other access technologies, the 6450 combines flexibility with operational simplicity."

The solution provides a rich set of features for service classification, policing and shaping for ingress and egress traffic flows complete with Occam's IP Security Management framework available on a per service basis with support for IGMP, DHCP Relay, Proxy ARP, MAC forced forwarding, Denial of Service protection and other mechanisms.

Occam Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: OCNW)