Louisville, Colorado, February 3, 2011—Ten industry suppliers participated in a DOCSIS® Provisioning of EPON (DPoE™) interoperability testing event at CableLabs®. The January 24–28 interop was the first in a series of interoperability events scheduled in 2011. The next interoperability event for DPoE products is scheduled to begin on April 11, 2011.

Version 1.0 of the DPoE specifications provided the basis for the interoperability event. DPoE specifications provide requirements for Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON) equipment to be provisioned using current DOCSIS provisioning systems and service concepts. The specifications also define requirements and functionality to support Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) Ethernet Private Line (EPL) service for business customers.

"One of the major goals of the DPoE specifications is to facilitate multi-vendor interoperability. The success of this event has demonstrated that the cable vendor community, and in particular the EPON vendor community, have embraced the DPoE specifications," said Curtis Knittle, Director of Digital Video Services at CableLabs.

Suppliers participating in the event include Atheros, Broadcom, Cisco, Finisar, Hitachi, Huawei, MRV, PMC-Sierra, Sumitomo, and ZTE.

During the interop event the companies exhibited a high level of interoperability between eight DPoE Systems, seven DPoE ONUs, and four demarcation devices. Interoperability focused on PON-layer registration, provisioning, and operational systems support interfaces (OSSI).

"The DPoE specifications will allow cable operators to deploy EPON equipment for business services and use the same back office servers used by DOCSIS networks to provision the equipment. This interop was an excellent first step toward validating the version 1.0 specifications, and it clearly shows the cable industry is going to benefit from a greater degree of interoperability," said Robert Harris, Vice President of Network Planning and Architecture for Time Warner Cable.

CableLabs' interoperability events provide vendors with an informal laboratory setting in which they have the opportunity to test their latest products within CableLabs' headends and testing environment, determine compliance with industry specifications and the ability of their products to interoperate with other devices in an end-to-end system.

About CableLabs: Cable Television Laboratories (www.cablelabs.com) was founded in 1988 by members of the cable television industry. A non-profit research and development consortium, CableLabs delivers innovations that enable cable operators to be the providers of choice in their markets. Cable operators from around the world are members. CableLabs maintains additional web sites at www.cablenet.org and www.ebif.tv.

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