STOCKHOLM -- Swedish PacketFront has been chosen as one of the solution vendors whose equipment will be a part of Acreo AB's governmentally funded broadband test-bed project with aims at keeping Sweden in the forefront of the global broadband market.

The test-bed project was initiated by Acreo AB during the summer of 2002, and was initially equally financed by VINNOVA and Ericsson. The main purposes of the project are:

“We are happy to participate in such an important project as the Acreo test-bed”, says Niclas Sonesson, CTO of PacketFront. “We believe that the implications for Sweden as an IT-nation, as well as the development of the Swedish broadband market, will be significant.”

The basic network architecture that will be established is a network configuration with metro and access network set-up in two locations: Kista and Hudiksvall, connected with a high-speed C/DWDM link.

PacketFront’s involvement includes access equipment for around 100 townhouses and villas. The first phase consists of PacketFront’s fibre solution, but shortly the test will also include the company’s recently launched VDSL solution.

The project aims at establishing a test-bed in the form of an optical network supporting broadband end-to-end service applications. The initiative is tightly coupled to the development and testing of broadband services in order to verify different services’ quality requirements on the network architecture. Other aims are to be able to test interoperability and evaluate systems from different vendors.

“This is an excellent opportunity for us to show the advantages of our award-winning control and provisioning system BECS™ in direct comparison with other systems”, Sonesson continues. “We are confident that the inclusion of our solution will lead to many fruitful conclusions regarding the handling of multiple services and competing service providers over one single infrastructure.”

PacketFront AB

Acreo AB