ADTRAN and Sumitomo Electric announced a major global broadband technology alliance targeting MSOs and service providers.
The US-based ADTRAN said that it will be responsible for selling Sumitomo Electric’s EPON business products in North America. ADTRAN will also manage technology license and OEM supply in North America, South America, EMEA, Australia and New Zealand.
ADTRAN will assume sales, customer relationship, distribution, support, manufacturing and development rights for these EPON solutions from Sumitomo Electric for its target markets outside of Japan and Asia.
Ovum forecast says there will be a significant upswing in optical component FTTx PON revenues due to next-gen PON deployments and plans. The PON OC market is forecast to exceed $2.3 billion in 2021.
Ovum principal analyst Julie Kunstler said ADTRAN is obtaining the widely deployed 10G EPON equipment solution in North America, while Sumitomo would leverage ADTRAN SD-Access portfolio in its home market.
ADTRAN will leverage Sumitomo Electric’s dominant North American EPON market share and industry experience in engineering, support and sales functions. ADTRAN will integrate these EPON solutions into ADTRAN’s SD-Access portfolio to support ADTRAN’s ongoing commitment to serve the needs of its cable MSO customers.
Sumitomo Electric EPON products have been the market leader over the past twelve years in Japan, the last four years in North America and are a strong fit for ADTRAN to integrate into our SD-Access portfolio.
“These products come to ADTRAN with large, installed deployments within leading MSOs, including the top two North American cable broadband providers,” Jay Wilson, senior VP of Technology and Strategy, ADTRAN, said.
Sumitomo will sell the ADTRAN SD-Access portfolio including ADTRAN Mosaic cloud platform, NG-PON2 and Gfast technologies in Japan and Asian market.
The companies said they will collaborate on future PON and SDN technology developments.
“Our global alliance ensures that cable MSOs and internet service providers are supported with the open and complete 10G-EPON, NG-PON2 and Gfast with SD-Access solutions,” said Hiroaki Nishimoto, general manager, Broad Networks Division, Sumitomo Electric.
