[By NBC-1TV H. J Yook]Faced with the prospect of increased competition with the rollout of the country's National Broadband Network (NBN), Australian fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) and wholesale service provider, OptiComm Co Pty Ltd, has future-proofed its core network with the deployment of advanced Brocade® NetIron® MLX®, CER and CES routers. The platform, implemented for OptiComm by Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) local partner ASI Solutions, has enabled OptiComm to utilize multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) as a key technology for increasing network flexibility, scalability and manageability.

OptiComm's business model is based on partnering with residential, commercial and industrial property developers to connect buildings and individual units with fiber-optic cables that provide access to Internet, telephone and TV services. Aside from the owner of the National Broadband Network, NBN Co, OptiComm is the largest provider of FTTP in Australia with more than 70 projects under development and contracts to deliver services to over 170,000 lots in residential and business precincts.

“The deployment of the new Brocade infrastructure is key to our strategy for constantly improving our delivery of products to customers. This is testament that quality architecture and extremely robust and cost-effective technology enable OptiComm to provide both residential and business-class service guarantees and bandwidth with unlimited capability,” said Phil Smith, OptiComm's Chief Regulatory Officer.

“We are now running MPLS to network edge devices and have it interfaced to our passive optical network connected to customers‘ premises. Essentially this enables us to carry multiple types of network service -- not just those using the Internet Protocol but traditional voice, cable TV and legacy data service -- right across our network. It also gives us very granular network traffic control so we can prioritize delay-sensitive services while also having ’scale-out' capability to meet increased capacity requirements.”

According to Smith, OptiComm selected Brocade MLXe-8 core routers based on the company's positive experience with its previous Brocade core network platform -- which never had to be restarted in its five years of operation -- and the cost-effectiveness of the overall Brocade solution.

OptiComm has been able to protect its existing investment in Brocade routers by redeploying its existing Brocade NetIron CER 2000 routers as MPLS network edge devices. This is one of the factors Smith cited in the Brocade solution providing a very good return on investment.

Smith estimated that an alternative offering proposed by another vendor would have cost OptiComm approximately 30 times as much per site. With 70 sites already connected, the total cost savings amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars. As OptiComm continues to connect new communities, business and industrial areas to its network, the eventual savings from the Brocade MPLS solution are likely to be in the millions.

“OptiComm‘s ongoing success and program of network investment is quite illuminating,” said Greig Guy, Brocade country manager for Australia and New Zealand. “We’re pleased that the OptiComm team has once again selected Brocade to provide a next-generation network core. I think it underlines the fact that, once you eliminate the access network bottleneck, service innovation depends on what you have in the network backbone.”