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It's the Microfilter, Stupid
Tuesday, 08 May 2012 20:05

Vectoring’s cool, fiber is fast, customer support and maintenance is boring. But bringing down operating expenses may have more impact on broadband economics than exciting technology. One large European carrier is finding big savings changing the call center scripts to emphasize the most common problem. The ASSIA presentation for their new release (below) identified the microfilter problem, which they are addressing with diagnostics.
  The flashiest feature in ASSIA’s new DSL Expresse 2.7 is the ability of a field technician to use her iPhone for “real-time line optimization.” While at the customer premise, the tech can adjust the DSLAM parameters for the line and see if it resolves the problem. So can the call center operator. ASSIA’s extending that to Android phones as well.
   Expresse now can support unbundled VDSL, crucial to several European rollouts, especially of vectoring. British Telecom and Deutsche Telekom, the largest VDSL/FTTN rollouts in Europe, can’t use vectoring until they make it compatible with regulatory policy. Expresse now supports “Multi-tenancy,” allowing each ISP access to their own customer information and support. This is now supported on Alcatel DSLAMs and will soon cover Huawei as well.
   KPN confirms they will deploy vectoring by the end of the year, as reported by Telecom Paper. They join Telecom Austria, Swisscom and Belgacom in public announcements of vectoring. Vectored DSL will be common in new builds later this year or next.


 
Here’s the company release

ASSIA Helps Telcos Meet Exploding Bandwidth Demand with High-Speed DSL

ASSIA DSL Expresse 2.7 Equips Telcos with Powerful Multi-tenancy Features that Prepare for Vectoring in Unbundled Environments, Advanced Diagnostics and Industry-First Real-Time Line Optimization that Allows Service Providers to Slash Costs and Improve Revenue

Redwood City, Calif. - May 8, 2012 - ASSIA, Inc., the leading provider of high-performance software tools for dynamic spectrum management (DSM) of digital subscriber line (DSL) networks, today released ASSIA DSL Expresse® 2.7, a new version of its award-winning product for optimizing the performance of DSL networks. ASSIA DSL Expresse 2.7 is a major first step toward enabling incumbent and competitive local exchange carriers/local loop unbundlers to offer and manage high-speed 100 megabits per second (Mbps) vectored very-high-bit-rate digital subscriber line (VDSL) services.  With advanced diagnostics tools and industry-first, real-time line optimization, ASSIA empowers DSL service providers to lower their capital and operating expenses, increase revenue, and deliver new multimedia content to the broadband-enabled home.
Vectored VDSL, the next generation of DSL, delivers speeds of 100 Mbps, and deployments will accelerate in late 2012 and 2013.  Such high speeds will help DSL maintain its lead worldwide in fixed-access broadband services. Furthermore, such increased broadband capacity will help DSL networks play a vital role in offloading network traffic from overloaded cellular networks via DSL-connected Wi-Fi access points.
ASSIA DSL Expresse 2.7 is the first product to offer advanced network management software for multi-tenant environments. The multi-tenant architecture facilitates carrier unbundling by enabling multiple service providers’ simultaneous use of the same software instance to optimize their lines’ interplay and performance.
Improved multi-tenancy features offer several key advantages: improved economies of scale in highly compartmentalized Internet service providers (ISP), as seen particularly in China and other regions in Asia; accelerated ISP VDSL deployment through coordination of co-existing copper pairs’ management in preparation for vectoring; the ability to share infrastructure costs among ISPs looking to introduce new services;  and the ability to add a regulatory “super-user” to monitor the quality and performance of the network.
ASSIA DSL Expresse 2.7 also includes new features that establish it as the leading multi-platform diagnostics and optimization software for DSL network management:
  • Real-time line optimization, which significantly improves customer satisfaction and reduces service calls and repair costs
  • Support for single-ended loop test (SELT) for enhanced diagnostics, cost savings, and service delivery, such as the ability to pinpoint faults and direct dispatches to their exact location
  • Time-variable trend detection for lines that experience sporadic, random problems, which often can be repaired inexpensively, rather than sending a dispatch or losing a customer because of unstable, hard-to-diagnose, line performance
“The new features in ASSIA DSL Expresse 2.7 address many of the challenges that I’ve heard operators are having with VDSL deployments, such as microfilter detection and diagnostic accuracy,” said Jeff Heynen, directing analyst, broadband access and video, at research firm Infonetics. “Clearly, ASSIA is paying attention and has designed the latest version of its powerful, vendor-neutral DSL Expresse solution to help make VDSL rollouts cheaper, smoother, and faster. Real-time optimization, improved diagnostics, and multi-tenancy support all add up to faster broadband over copper and reduced time to revenue for operators.”
“ASSIA continues to respond to operators’ needs as they adjust their existing infrastructure to meet consumer demand for high-speed broadband,” said Dr. John Cioffi, ASSIA CEO and chairman. “The innovative diagnostics and optimization included in DSL Expresse 2.7 allow these service providers to enhance the broadband consumer’s experience while reducing costs.  ASSIA recognizes that multi-tenant technology is critical for service providers to offer next-generation vectored VDSL for high-bandwidth multimedia content, as well as emerging applications, such as offloading traffic from cellular networks, and these new tools pave the way for rapid deployment.”
ASSIA DSL Expresse 2.7 is available immediately. For more information, contact ASSIA at +1-650-654-3400 orhttp://www.assia-inc.com/about-assia/contact-assia/.
About ASSIA
ASSIA Inc. develops high-performance software tools that dramatically improve the speed and reach of DSL networks. Using Dynamic Spectrum Management (DSM), these platform-agnostic tools enable DSL service providers to manage lines in real time and to lower capital and operating expenses, increase revenue, and deliver new multimedia content to the broadband-enabled home. ASSIA has more than 60 million lines under contract with top-tier service providers worldwide and is backed by strategic investors, including AT&T, Mingly China Growth Fund, SFR Development, Sandalwood Partners, Sofinnova Partners, Stanford University, Swisscom Ventures, T-Ventures, and Telefonica. For more information, visit www.assia-inc.com.
ASSIA DSL Expresse is a registered trademark of ASSIA, Inc.


     
Last Updated on Tuesday, 08 May 2012 23:39