World Wide Packets will announce next week that it is expanding its LightningEdge product family with a new Ethernet demarcation point geared specifically to serve business customers.

The LE-310 is designed to let carriers implementing active Ethernet-based fiber-to-the-premises architectures pick up business customers that they tend to pass along the way. Previously, the company would have given carriers its LE-46 devices. However, that system didn’t have many of the features carriers wanted for business users, said Mathieu Tallegas, Director of Product Management for WWP.

“As we were selling to carriers like NTL and Telewest in the U.K., we found they had the need for very low cost business CPE,” he said. “We decided to use our consolidated product as a base and developed a very low-cost demarcation point for any type of business service.”

The 310 includes three basic port types—10/100 over copper; a triple-speed 10/100Mbps/GigE over copper and three dual speed 100 Gb/s SFP (Small Form-Factor Pluggable) ports. The resulting product gives carriers the ability to deliver 100Mb/s or Gigabit drops to the subscriber on either fiber or copper.

“The dual speed uplink is kind of nice because it enables the carrier to sell 1 Mb/s service and then to increase the service to a Gigabit without having to do anything at that location,” Tallegas said.

Initially, the company anticipates most service providers will want the 310 for business customers. However, there are some markets such as India, it could be used in multi-dwelling unit residential applications.

“That is really a very high volume application potential,” he said. “But the primary target is the European and North American carriers.”