Swedish Cable Operator Leverages Calix for Advanced Broadband Services

Köpings Kabel-TV serves local residences and businesses with Calix fiber and copper access solutions

LINKÖPING, SWEDEN — Calix, Inc. (NYSE: CALX) today announced that Swedish service provider Köpings Kabel-TV AB (Köpings Kabel) is leveraging the Calix Unified Access portfolio to deliver advanced broadband services to its subscribers. The residents and businesses of the Köping community are being served via a wide range of access technologies, including gigabit passive optical network (GPON), point-to-point gigabit Ethernet (GE), and digital subscriber line (DSL), across both fiber and copper. Capable of delivering speeds of up to 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps), this advanced access infrastructure is one of Europe’s most advanced broadband networks.

“As the broadband demands of our subscribers continued to grow in our community, we wanted to be able to take advantage of our existing cable ducting infrastructure to provide a wider range of services including ultra high-speed data, reliable voice, and advanced broadband TV services as well as our traditional channels,” said Daniel Nordqvist, Chief Technology Officer of Köpings Kabel. “We realized that our existing platform could not scale to meet these demands, so we looked to Calix to provide us with a portfolio approach. The Calix B6 and the 700GE family of optical network terminals (ONTs) will provide us with the ability to grow as our customer base grows, and to migrate from GPON and DSL to point-two-point GE as the market demands.”

Swedish reseller Cygate has played a key role in enabling, Köpings Kabel’s success, recommending the Calix B6 Ethernet Service Access Node (ESAN) and 700GE family of optical network terminals (ONTs). The B6/700GE solution is well-suited to meet the emerging demands of the Köping community, providing a flexible mix of technology options to efficiently and effectively meet ever-changing services and bandwidth requirements.

Mats Mägiste, Chief Technology Officer at Swedish-based reseller Cygate, said: “The Calix platform is a carrier-grade product designed and built for operators with large or growing numbers of subscribers. It is scalable and cost-effective in a municipal environment and an ideal solution for Köpings Kabel, providing a highly reliable platform for the community to build out its fiber network. Köping will join the growing number of towns and cities that are taking advantage of high speed communications to improve their services. Köpings Kabel has taken a wise decision in moving to fiber and in choosing the Calix platform to combine lower operating costs and reliable service.”

Köpings Kabel is a well-established cable TV operator, delivering services across its widely distributed cable network throughout the city of Köping and the surrounding communities. Situated in Central Sweden, Köping has a population of some 17,000 inhabitants. Köpings Kabel serves over 10,000 subscribers with its TV and cable services and provides them with 110 high definition channels. The company continues to extend its services to include IP telephony and high-speed broadband services. Looking to the future, Köpings Kabel anticipates a myriad of new applications and services that are enabled by superfast broadband, including high definition and 3D TV, multi-player gaming, and high-speed data services for business, and views deep fiber deployment in its network as a key enabler of its future success. As a cable operator, the company already has good access to many homes and is able to roll-out fiber cost-effectively through its existing infrastructure, to single and multiple dwelling residences and businesses.

One of the advantages of the B-Series is its ability to scale from just a few users up to thousands of subscribers. It has distributed traffic processing which removes the need for common equipment and simplifies network and service expansion, allowing it to meet the kind of growth requirements that Köpings Kabel is facing as it gradually ramps up services in line with demand. Each B6 chassis features an intelligent architecture that further simplifies broadband deployments, creating a highly flexible solution. At the same time, this is a carrier class product delivering robustness, reliability and high quality of service.

The new network infrastructure will enable Köpings Kabel to operate a single network over a unified access platform combining GPON, point-to-point GE, and DSL technologies to deliver advanced broadband services. Although fiber access technologies will be used to serve most premises, DSL solutions over copper will be leveraged for multiple dwelling units (MDUs), where fiber will be deployed to the building and services can then be relayed onwards via existing in-building copper infrastructure.

One significant application will be for MDUs using a mixture of fiber-to-the-building (FTTB) and coaxial cable to deliver cost effective high-speed services within the building. Köpings Kabel’s parent company has housing interests and operates a number of these units, where it is also using the FTTB broadband connection to conduct surveillance and monitoring of boiler rooms for the heating and ventilation and also for some building management operations. The company is also responsible for Köping’s school buildings and is implementing faster broadband as a means of minimizing costs through intelligent systems, allowing remote adjustment of heating and ventilation, plus alarm systems for malfunctions.

Calix will be sponsoring and attending the Swedish Urban Networks Conference at Linköping Consert & Congress Center, March 21-22.