Hatteras Networks Inc.’s HN4000 and HN400 gear last month got the RUS stamp of approval from the United States Department of Agriculture, the company announced this week. The federal government’s RUS program provides funding and low-cost loans to service providers investing in networks to serve rural communities.
While Hatteras already is supplying its Ethernet-over-copper gear to Atlantic Telephone Membership Cooperative, Farmers Telephone Cooperative Inc. and Home Telephone Co. for rural deployments, Gary Bolton, vice president of marketing at the vendor, says the RUS acceptance will “increase the ubiquity of the service offering,” which the vendor refers to as mid-band Ethernet.
The mid-band sweet spot ranges from 2mbps to 20mbps, Bolton says, adding that these speeds can be ideal to support services like VoIP and data for such end users as rural or branch banks, educational institutions, government offices and others not reached by fiber.
Hatteras equipment gives service providers both the flexibility to bring customers Ethernet services over copper and to do it at a range of speeds so those network operators can start small, if they wish, and scale up bandwidth as demand requires, Bolton says. “We have architected the product around success-based deployment,” he adds. “So you can start off with one rack unit high HN4000 and serve up to 40 businesses, and then you can move up.”
Some companies that initially justify the Hatteras gear for use in “retail” offerings like those mentioned above then leverage that investment by using mid-band Ethernet for internal applications like cellular backhaul, says Bolton. For example, MTS Allstream recently began using its mid-band Ethernet network to backhaul transport from wireless cell tower sites for 1xEV-DO, he says.
News of the RUS approval follows, by just a month, Hatteras’ announcement that it has won the first RBOC commercial deployment of mid-band Ethernet, with BellSouth. And in March Hatteras announced another major service provider, XO Communications, is using its gear. Bolton says the RBOCs represent about 88 percent of the U.S. opportunity for Hatteras, and the independents and other service providers make up the other 12 percent of the addressable market. Bolton says Hatteras is also “having very good success outside of North America” noting its recent win (in partnership with Siemens) with T-Com Hungary.
“We have hit an inflection point,” says Bolton, adding that Hatteras expects to announce other wins, in major countries outside North America and Europe, next month.
Hatteras Networks Inc. www.hatterasnetworks.com
