Ribbon Communications agreed to acquire ECI Telecom Group for 32.5 million shares of Ribbon common stock and $324 million of cash. ECI stockholders will also receive approximately $31 million from ECI’s sale of real estate assets. This
ECI is a global provider of end-to-end packet-optical transport and SDN/NFV solutions for service providers, enterprises, and data center operators. The privately held company was founded in 1961, currently has approximately 1,700 employees, and is headquartered in Petah Tikva, Israel. ECI serves over 300 global customers with over 100 new customer wins in the last three years. ECI’s total revenue was $376 million and Adjusted EBITDA was $23 million for the twelve months ended September 30, 20193.
The companies said their merger will create a powerful, leading-edge solutions provider with anticipated combined annual revenue of over $900 million, serving customers in more than 140 countries, and 4,000 employees worldwide. Ribbon expects the combination to position the company for growth by expanding its product portfolio beyond solutions primarily supporting voice applications to include data applications and optical networking.
Ribbon’s corporate headquarters is expected to remain in Westford, Massachusetts.
“The ECI acquisition will extend Ribbon’s reach into the networking market and propel us into the global 5G market,” said Daryl Raiford, Chief Financial Officer of Ribbon. “ECI brings world class networking technology and a proven track record of success in winning top customers in direct competition with major industry players. Ribbon has long-standing, deep customer relationships in North America and Japan, which will provide immediate access to ECI solutions into these substantial markets. We believe this combination will create new revenue opportunities to drive growth, provide our customers and partners with a broader solutions portfolio, and generate significant long-term value for our stockholders.”
We are excited to join forces with Ribbon, bringing together Ribbon’s and ECI’s rich portfolios of communications solutions. Both companies enjoy a distinguished operating history and are trusted suppliers to the world’s leading telecommunication service providers and enterprises,” said Darryl Edwards, President and Chief Executive Officer of ECI. “We aim to create a powerhouse company that offers world-class products for an enhanced customer experience, benefiting our combined global customer base.”
ECI debuts 5G cell site router
The 1022 cell site router combines high capacity in a small form factor. It offers MPLS, network slicing, class C and D synch capabilities and open NetConf/Yang interfaces.
ECI said the 1022 represents the next evolution of its Neptune product line, inheriting its multiservice, Elastic MPLS capabilities that allow customers to support current, future and legacy services on a single platform. Its front access, extended temperature range make it equally at home at a cell site or operating as an access device for a substation.ECI enhances its Apollo optical transport with 8x24CDCF ROADM
ECI said its programmable wavelength switching far surpasses the capabilities of contentionless ROADMs available today, which are based on multicast switches (MCS). The 8x24CDCF ROADM enables add/drop port scaling to support capacity growth while eliminating the need for additional amplification to overcome optical losses in multicast switches. As a result, the 8x24CDCF ROADM offers more density, reliability and power efficiency at a lower cost.Key features of the 8x24CDCF ROADM include:
- Reduced cost: Next generation CDC ROADM networks see cost savings due to improved scalability of add/drop ports and removal of superfluous EDFA arrays.
- Improved performance: Delivers scalability and reliable performance regardless of port count and lessens strict filtering requirements on transmitters and receivers. It also eliminates the performance degradation from out-of-band noise accumulation.
- Increased Flexibility: Works in conjunction with ECI’s Apollo product line, including the recently debuted TM1200 programmable 1.2T dual channel blade, providing customers with a wide set of ‘mix-n-match’ modules from which they can choose to design the optical network of their choice.
ECI intros 1.2T Dual Channel Blade for its Apollo DWDM transport
ECI said its new TM1200 blade delivers unmatched spectral efficiency and elasticity through software controllable continuous modulation. Whereas traditional line-side modulation was only programmable in large increments – such as 100G, 200G or 400G – often relying on different line cards, the new TM1200 delivers software-controlled continuous modulation in 50 Gbps increments up to 600 Gbps line rate, rather than supporting specific modulation schemes. This maximizes capacity in a granular manner to best match client needs and variable channel conditions.
Additional benefits:
- Optimal return on fiber investment: By operating at the edge of the Shannon limit, the TM1200 squeezes the maximum capacity from each channel on a fiber, delaying the need to add new fiber and optical networking infrastructure.
- Enables a highly adaptive and flexible optical layer: Working in conjunction with ECI's colorless, directionless, contentionless, flexible spectrum ROADMs, and client services aware SDN control, the TM1200 can continuously optimize client traffic to fiber capacity.
- Dynamic restoration: Excess capacity can be allocated dynamically to fully or partially restore client services that are disrupted by fiber or equipment failures elsewhere in the network.
- Power efficiency: At a 600 Gbps line rate, the ECI TM1200 has a 10-fold improvement in power efficiency compared to other solutions, consuming less than 0.18W per Gbps, fully populated.
