Ethernet access gear-maker Overture Networks today announced that its equipment has been certified by Verizon Business, enabling Overture gear to be installed at customer premises and Verizon co-location sites in order to deliver Ethernet services over copper and fiber lines.

Landing Verizon’s certification is another key validation for the seven-year-old Overture, said Chip Redden, vice president of marketing and product management for Overture. “From our viewpoint, it is another large Tier 1 validating what we do at the Ethernet access edge,” Redden said. “It is important for us as a small company to have a large provider say, basically, ‘We’ve tested their products, they work, we are going to be using them.’”

The ability to handle both copper and fiber is Overture’s key differentiation in a crowded Ethernet market, Redden said.

“As much as everyone might like to deliver Ethernet over fiber, it does not go everywhere,” Redden said. “In fact, it doesn’t go to most buildings. The biggest challenge for service providers is to reconcile the differences between fiber and copper. Research shows that by 2010, there will be 100,000 fiber points delivering Ethernet, but there will be 300,000 copper points. We can deliver 10 [Megabit per second] or 100 [Mb/s] carried back over a DS-3 or multiple DS-3s or an OC-3.”

The Verizon certification includes the Overture ISG 5100, a multipurpose box that can provide both access and aggregation at either the customer premises or a Verizon co-lo, and the ISG 45+, which provides 10/100 Ethernet access at the premises and a single DS-3 uplink to the network.