ECI chosen as a partner for optical solutions in Ericsson’s transport offering

ECI optical solutions will be integrated into Ericsson’s 5G offering

Petach Tikva, Israel – Sept. 5, 2018 – ECI, a global provider of ELASTIC Network® solutions for service providers, critical infrastructures and data center operators, announced today a business and technology partnership with Ericsson to accelerate and deliver joint solutions to service providers rolling out 5G networks. ECI’s optical solutions will be integrated into Ericsson’s mobile transport offering.

5G will drive significant demand for bandwidth – with the industry estimating a 100 to 1000-fold capacity increase – and an exponential surge in end-end-connections. While mass implementation is not to be expected before 2020, many operators are already beginning to introduce 5G New Radio (NR) with traffic traversing current 4G/LTE networks. However, fulfilling the true potential of 5G will require an updated network infrastructure, capable of supporting more sophisticated services based on the concept of network slicing.

ECI’s packet/optical solutions provide a scalable transport solution for radio access network (RAN) to core connectivity, offering an optimized feature set for mobile backhaul, environmentally hardened for any condition as required. ECI’s programmable transport products enable operators to tailor connectivity based on the use case or service profile, via network slicing. Moreover, ECI’s implementation of open APIs, interfaces and SDN controllability ensure full functionality in the Ericsson ecosystem. The ECI optical solutions will be integrated into Ericsson’s end-to-end mobile transport solutions, supporting 5G and IoT use case introductions.

The partnership is a result of previous collaboration and follows a thorough process of due diligence. The decision was further solidified by a number of joint wins in Denmark, Greece, USA and Brazil. The joint offering is already reaping benefits with a growing pipeline of new opportunities worldwide.

Nishant Batra, Head of Product Area Networks at Ericsson says, “By combining our leading transport portfolio with ECI’s optical solutions, we will boost our transport offering and complement the critical building blocks of next-generation transport networks. This will bring benefits to our customers today and when introducing 5G and IoT use cases tomorrow.”

“Telecommunications networks are changing faster than ever before with the new functionalities and demands brought on by 5G. ECI’s open, elastic solutions are designed for the changing, more complex demands and complement Ericsson’s offering perfectly. This partnership will enable both parties to address a growing customer base with a more competitive and comprehensive offering,” said Darryl Edwards, CEO and president of ECI.

ECI equipment will be showcased at MWC Americas at the Ericsson booth Hall South Stand S.1724, and representatives from both companies will be on hand to answer any questions.