Elisa VDSL2 Leads Finland's Broadband Market

With more than 2.2 million mobile subscribers and 1.3 million fixed line subscribers, Elisa is Finland’s second largest operator of integrated services. It also leads the Finnish broadband market with over 513,000 broadband subscribers.

Existing ADSL2+ networks, however, cannot meet increasing bandwidth demands, and the emerging FTTH faces enormous investment pressure. Governments and operators in Finland are therefore seeking better solutions for the accessibility of feature-rich high-speed broadband services in order to retain home users and local enterprise users.

Faced with new market competition during the global economic crisis, Elisa chose to cooperate with ZTE in 2008 to deploy a new broadband access platform.

With the rapid development of carrier-class broadband technologies and the explosive growth of their subscriber base and network traffic, Elisa hopes to deliver full, high quality services to its customers. VDSL2 is a new broadband access technology that is compatible with ADSL2+ and supports up to 100M uplink/downlink bandwidth. As VDSL2 can be used to offer ultra-high bandwidth—while saving operators’ investment in subscriber loops—it has become an ideal choice for last mile access. ZXDSL 9806H, ZTE’s award-winning VDSL2 DSLAM equipment, was chosen by Elisa to deliver quality broadband services for the following reasons:

First, ZXDSL 9806H is capacity and networking versatile. It provides ADSL, ADSL2+, SHDSL, VDSL2, and LAN ports at the user side, and GE uplink ports at the network side. It also supports uplink PON such as uplink EPON, GPON, 10G EPON, and 10G GPON ports. With the development of video services, ZXDSL 9806H will incorporate more functions. It can be flexibly installed due to its compact size and high density features, and is ideal for small spaces, outdoor environments, and residential or business buildings.

Second, ZXDSL 9806H has low power consumption. The results of tests performed by multiple operators show that ZXDSL 9806H is environmentally friendly. As a next-generation integrated broadband access device, it has the lowest power consumption of all products of its kind in the industry. Its power consumption is far lower than that set by the European Union, and this can be attributed to ZTE’s in-depth research into system architecture, cooling, and power management.

Third, ZXDSL 9806H supports mobile backhaul. It can be used for UMTS backhaul service transmission, which allows fast deployment of mobile broadband services between newly established base stations. Although it adopts economic packet transmission, it can provide a QoS guarantee. This minimizes Elisa’s operating expenditure (OPEX). The successful application of ZTE’s VDSL2 for UMTS backhaul has helped Elisa achieve true fixed and mobile convergence (FMC) in service delivery and maintenance.

Finally, as the recipient of many prestigious awards, ZXDSL 9806H is highly regarded by operators around the world. It was awarded the Infovision Award at the Broadband World Forum Europe in Berlin, October 2007; the Convergence World Award at the SOFNET Forum in London, April 2008; and was awarded the top ranking in Current Analysis’s product performance evaluation report in the Global Remote DSLAMs category in 2009.

VDSL2 is a new generation DSL technology, and has been widely adopted by telecom operators and internet providers in Finland and even the whole of Europe. By cooperating with ZTE, Elisa has deployed a new VDSL2 platform that can deliver high-quality broadband services with lower OPEX and greatly boost its competitiveness in the Finnish broadband market. Elisa has signed a five-year global procurement contract with ZTE, and has been devoted to building leading-edge broadband access platforms for its customers around the globe.