Ethernity Networks (Israel) announced it has signed a new $4.6 million follow-on contract with its existing customer, a Chinese broadband network OEM. Under the contract, Ethernity will supply system-on-chip (SoC) devices with support for Gigabit Passive Optical Networking (GPON) Optical Line Termination (OLT) units, adapted to enable Fiber-to-the-Room (FTTR) deployments.
Ethernity, a supplier of networking processing semiconductor technology ported via FPGA [field programmable gate array] for virtualized networking appliances, says its silicon platform offers GPON OLT functionality over an extremely low-cost FPGA to serve residential and small-office customer premises equipment (CPE) for FTTR deployments.
Ethernity noted the new announcement marks its second major contract with this customer, following an original $3 million GPON/XGS-PON OLT SoC order in October 2021, bringing the total value of contracts with customer for Ethernity's PON technology to $7.6 million.
Given the success of that initial project, the company revealed that the customer proposed a follow-on project to address the larger FTTR market, targeting residential deployments and expanding Ethernity's reach into a new mass-volume market.
As reckoned by an Ethernity Networks press release:
"Fiber-to-the-Room is a disruptive trend that uses passive optical fiber to reach residential, retail, and enterprise deployments. Passive fiber-optic deployments provide greater reliability and performance than Wi-Fi and a greener and more power-efficient solution than traditional copper cabling. By bringing fiber into the individual rooms of an apartment or small office, end-users can benefit from higher throughput with an unmatched level of service to enable today's most data-hungry applications without experiencing lags."
The news heralds the largest single FPGA volume-based contract award that Ethernity has entered into to date, the company said. With the new SoC device being a major enabler within the next-generation home gateway segment and considering the significant estimated volumes indicated by the customer beyond the committed volume per the contract, the company added that the extended contract award "may justify porting the design integrated on the FPGA to an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) to allow long-term competitive pricing."
David Levi, CEO of Ethernity Networks, commented:
"This deal confirms our prior expectations that Ethernity's contract wins would lead to follow-on business. We are extremely pleased with the advances we have made on a deployable PON product with this OEM customer, and we are excited to begin work on this extended offering for the new FTTR market. This is a totally untapped market for Ethernity that utilizes our existing 5G infrastructure technology to serve a major connected residential market. I believe this is the tip of the iceberg in this growing market for Ethernity with further potential to generate significant additional revenue flows."