Occam Networks today announced that it has launched a fiber-to-the-premises adaptation of its BLC 6000 platform. Moreover, the company is throwing its lot in the emerging market behind an active Ethernet architecture instead of a passive optical network.

The new architecture comes as a result of a new blade, the 6312, that acts as a 22-port active Gigabit Ethernet Optical Line Terminal. The company also is launching a residential Optical Network Terminal, the ON 2240.

Like the BLC 6000 itself, the FTTP version is targeting the independent telco market. Occam will demonstrate the new blade for the first time at Supercomm, which is slightly later than it would have liked, said Kris Sowolla, vice president of business development for Occam.

The company initially had looked for a partner to move into the FTTP market, but ultimately decided that the technology was too essential to its mission to get from a partner, he said.

"We did lose some time, but we came to the right decision," Sowolla said. "We're coming to market later than customers wanted but with [a product] that customers want."

Occam is not announcing any customers with the product launch, but it has several clients using the BLC 6000, including Surewest Communications and Hargray Communications, that would represent natural fits for the FTTP blade. Perhaps the biggest leap that would have to be made is adoption of the active Ethernet architecture. Sowolla believes that model for active networks fits much better in the independent market despite the apparent dominance of PONs.

"There are a lot of reasons that PON is the dominant solution and one reason is that five years ago, the costs were much more expensive [for active]," he said. "The other thing is if you look at a Greenfield, with PON you don't have any active electronics in the access network. For our customers, they've already invested in those cabinets. The power drop is already there. They're not thinking in terms of what it costs to put active electronics in the loop because that's already a sunk cost. That's when the economics start to shift."

Active architectures also are much more open technology, Sowolla contends, noting that the company will work with multiple ONT vendors on interoperability with the new blade.

The move into FTTP, though, will also put Occam in direct competition with Tellabs. The two companies announced a strategic alliance in March under which Tellabs will sell the BLC 6000 to larger carriers as the Tellabs 1300. It's unlikely that agreement will extend to the 6312.

Regardless, Occam believes that its newest addition will give the BLC a boost.

"A lot of the motivation to do this is to give confidence to our customers that it's OK to buy our copper-based product today," Sowolla said. "They didn't want to get stranded with a DSL solution only."