ADTRAN and Sumitomo Electric enter EPON agreement

ADTRAN will assume sales, customer relationship, distribution, support, manufacturing and development rights for Sumitomo Electric's EPON solutions for its target markets outside of Japan and Asia.

The companies said ADTRAN will leverage Sumitomo Electric’s dominant North American EPON market share and deep industry experience in engineering, support and sales functions. These EPON solutions will be integrated into ADTRAN’s SD-Access portfolio to further support ADTRAN’s ongoing commitment to serve the needs of its growing base of cable MSO customers.

The technology license and OEM supply agreement covers for North America, South America, EMEA, Australia and New Zealand.

“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 industry-leading SD-Access portfolio,” said Jay Wilson, Senior Vice President of Technology and Strategy, ADTRAN. “These products come to ADTRAN with large, installed deployments within leading MSOs, including the top two North American cable broadband providers. We will build upon Sumitomo Electric solutions to further accelerate the MSO market’s adoption of our open, programmable and scalable architectures, enabling them to accomplish their strategic network priorities.”

“Our global alliance ensures that cable MSOs and internet service providers around the globe are supported with the industry’s most open and complete 10G-EPON, NG-PON2 and Gfast with SD-Access solutions and with the company best positioned to advance their networks and accommodate next-generation services,” said Hiroaki Nishimoto, General Manager, Broad Networks Division, Sumitomo Electric. “ADTRAN is the right partner for Sumitomo Electric, because of its long-term trust from Tier-1 Telco and MSO customers in North America, and also because of its leadership in a complementary product portfolio and its unique experience with deploying and maintaining remote electronics. We look forward to the collaboration between our teams that will result in more competitive solutions for our customers.”