LONDON -- Ethernet Europe -- Along with several hundred attendees and a slew of operator speakers, there was a neat set of news announcements out of the annual Light Reading Ethernet show here in London today, with Equinix Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX) and Actelis Networks Inc. grabbing the limelight. (See Ethernet Europe 2010, Ethernet Europe: Strong 'n' Hot, and Ethernet Europe: Bigger, Bolder Service Required.)

Equinix officially launched Carrier Ethernet Exchange commercial services here today, with 24 service providers hooked up to its initial five exchanges -- one in the UK and four in the US. For more on this development, see Ethernet Europe: Equinix Opens Ethernet Exchange Doors .

And its main rival in the Carrier Ethernet interconnect services market, CENX Inc. , is trying to keep pace: CENX today announced a partnership with European data center player Interxion , with a view to launching a European Carrier Neutral Ethernet Exchange service in London in June, followed by launches in other major European cities, including Amsterdam and Paris. (See CENX Takes Ethernet to Europe .)

Ethernet interconnect was a hot topic here today, with independent test lab European Advanced Networking Test Center AG (EANTC) showing off its Advanced Global Interconnect Test Demo, in which Spirent Communications plc was the lead test vendor. (See EANTC Global Interconnect and Spirent Tests Carrier Ethernet Interconnect.)

Actelis has unleashed a new set of capabilities that, it claims, will double the reach and capacity of Ethernet access services over copper. Analogous to what Assia Inc. and others are doing in the DSL world, Actelis has built on the Ethernet in the First Mile (EFM) specifications to develop Dynamic Rate Boost (DRB) and enhanced Dynamic Spectral Shaping (DSS). The former boosts the capabilities of bonded copper pairs, while the latter is designed to ensure that resulting services are "spectrally compliant" and don't interfere with other copper-based xDSL services. (See Actelis Touts New EFM Tech.)

The key aim with this development is to "kill the E1/T1 market," says Actelis's VP of worldwide sales, Joe Manuele. "Anywhere you might want to deploy a T1 or E1 service, now you can offer EFM," he claims.

The vendor also announced a new customer today, UK competitive service provider KCOM Group plc . (See Actelis Wins UK Deal.)

Other new from the London event includes:

• Metaswitch Kickstarts MPLS-TP
• Sunrise Hires Extreme Marketer
• Sunrise Telecom Tests Ethernet ENNI
  
  

— Ray Le Maistre, International Managing Editor, Light Reading