Third-party optical network terminals could lower fiber network costs.

With a pair of deals touted last week, equipment vendor TXP finally is helping to usher in a more multivendor environment for fiber-to-the-premises equipment — a trend that could aid FTTP economics for vendors and carriers alike.

Having acquired Siemens' portfolio of optical network terminals (ONTs), the customer premises gear in FTTP networks, Texas-based TXP now claims to interoperate with 14 other vendors' central office gear.

Starting early next year, Adtran has agreed to sell TXP's ONTs as part of a gigabit passive optical network (GPON) offering that Adtran hasn't yet announced. And starting this month, Adtran will offer a TXP product for retrofitting existing outside plant cabinets for FTTP.

TXP also will help Tellabs retrofit cabinets for the latter's 1134 multiservice access platform. Because TXP also designs private-label gear, Tellabs could be selling TXP ONTs already. Back in the spring, Tellabs said it was talking to potential partners to help spread out costs of its unprofitable ONT business, and this summer it introduced an indoor ONT, something TXP also offers.

“ONTs are a wide product family,” said Paul Forzisi, vice president of marketing for TXP. “Moving forward, we'll see units for homes, businesses and [multidwelling units] — units of different port densities, [radio frequency] overlay, RF return, [multimedia over coax]. That breadth of product offering is too wide for anyone to contemplate doing it all internally. We get to broaden product portfolios by leveraging quantity across multiple customers.”

Although some Asian vendors also design and sell ONTs, TXP appears to be the only pure-play ONT business in North America, so vendors say it has a home court advantage here.

The move toward a more multivendor ONT environment suffered a setback in late 2004 when the only pure-play ONT start-up, Vinci Systems, was acquired by Tellabs. Another vendor promising new ONTs in 2007, Amedia Networks, was evicted from its headquarters this fall for failing to pay its rent.