Pau Touts Optical Ethernet

PAU, France -- The French city of Pau today announced that it is deploying a new public Optical Ethernet infrastructure that will allow – for the first time in France – end users to subscribe to voice, data, and video services via a single open transport network. Based on Carrier-class Optical Ethernet technology, this state-of-the-art multi-service network will deliver Pau’s residents 100Mbps speed access to advanced triple-play services including lnternet access, Voice over IP, 100+ TV channels, and Video on Demand for 30 € a month. Expected to influence the next generation of network deployments in Europe, the new infrastructure will be one of the largest residential Ethernet deployments in the world, initially serving 21,000 homes with plans to expand to over 70,000 – or 160,000 residents – within three years.

“The wired optical end-to-end network belongs to the local authority, the same way the roads do,” said André Labarrère, Mayor of Pau, Senator, and former Minister of President Mitterand. “We rent this vital resource to a neutral company that lights and manages the infrastructure. In turn, they open the network to service providers that offer our residents and businesses advanced services such as Internet access, voice over IP, and video on demand. To accelerate this process, we created in Pau the first French ‘triple play’ service provider – IPVSet. Looking ahead, we will be “Wi-Fizing” the City to bring our citizens new services based on ambient intelligence such as E-health services and telematics in the car and services based on dematerialization such as invoicing and ticket delivery. Overall, I’m very pleased to note that the City of Pau, where three kings were born in the old times, is now entering and leading the Information Society Age.”

Based on the concept of “open access”, the new infrastructure is able to connect any service provider to its subscribers in the City of Pau. Leveraging Carrier-class Optical Ethernet technology that was designed specifically for the service provider environment, the network will enable carriers to provide customers with guaranteed service level agreements(SLAs) and sub-50 millisecond resiliency along with the latest triple-play broadband services. In addition, the network’s Optical Ethernet technology supports integration with circuit switched networks while it delivers Ethernet Circuit Emulation Services (CES) for support of TDM traffic and point-and-click OAM&P.

“We are pleased to be leading the new Broadband Information Era in France with the construction of this innovative multi-service network,” said Jean Pierre Jambes, in charge of development for the City of Pau. “Carrier-class Optical Ethernet technology is the perfect match for the infrastructure build-out needs of this important endeavor due to its high scalability, stringent QoS in a variety of applications, and its low cost. The new Optical Ethernet infrastructure will allow us to give our residents high speed access to today’s most advanced voice, data, and video services – at an affordable price. The positive impacts this network will have on our society and our economy will be felt for a long time to come.”