Last year Westell refined its strategy. It realized that carriers want to improve the profitability of DSL, they want the triple play and they want bifurcation, or both products that are fully loaded and those that aren’t so high end.
At SUPERCOMM this week, Westell is unveiling solutions to support that strategy.
“It’s about having intelligent customer premises equipment, manageability and quality of service,” says Gordon Reichard Jr., vice president of marketing for Westell.
The company announced its Powerspan products last week, which target voice over IP, passive optical networking and wireless hotspot applications. At SUPERCOMM, Westell announced the addition of power line and wireless networking adapters to its DSL products along with new home networking capabilities. The vendor has announced enhancements to its EnVoy management system, as well.
EnVoy allows the service provider to manage CPE, and the new features include the ability to manage all TR-069 devices as well as Westell products. It has been demonstrated to support more than 5 million CPE devices deployed via TR-069 specifications. Also, remote modem management will be available in select modems beginning in July.
That feature is important, as Westell is working to make its modems ready for ADSL2+. The company is looking at an October timeframe for this upgrade, Reichard says, and service providers will be able to do the upgrade through EnVoy.
Westell also has a gateway in trials that has ADSL (upgradeable to ADSL2+) and 802.11g in one box, Reichard says. That gateway also includes a plug-in for fiber, should that option become available. “So it can provide any future service we can think of,” he adds.
