Telco Systems Successfully Completes Multi-Vendor Carrier Ethernet Interoperability Testing

Business Wire, Nov 9, 2006

FOXBORO, Mass. -- Telco Systems, a provider of carrier-class transport and access solutions for public and private IP and TDM networks, today announced that it has successfully passed a wide range of Carrier Ethernet interoperability tests with multiple vendors. The testing was completed during the European Advanced Networking Test Center (EANTC) Carrier Ethernet Interoperability showcase presented at the Carrier Ethernet World Congress in Madrid, Spain, in September.

The test environment included over 50 products supplied by 16 vendors and revealed many improvements over last year's test results including:

* Multi-vendor interoperability of IEEE 802.1ah EFM OAM standard and 802.1ag Connectivity Fault Management draft standard

* IEEE 802.3ad Ethernet link aggregation tests for native Ethernet link resilience

* MPLS as a foundation for large Carrier Ethernet networks

* Support for advanced traffic engineering in MPLS

Telco Systems provided its T-Metro 100, T-Metro 200, T-Marc 250, and T-Marc 254 for testing in the access and edge network and successfully interoperated with other vendors in T-MPLS rings, EFM OAM (IEEE 802.3ah), VLAN-based OAM connectivity messages (IEEE 802.1ag), link aggregation (IEEE 802.1ad), and Circuit Emulation Services (CES) over Ethernet as defined by the MEF.

"Telco Systems is proud to be among the Tier 1 vendors of Carrier Ethernet access solutions," stated Ofer Finkelstein VP Marketing of Telco Systems. "The results of this event have shown that our T-Metro and T-Marc product families are unique in the industry giving operators non-stop networking, hierarchical Quality of Service and an unparalleled OAM toolkit. Many of our Tier 1 and customers around the world are already realizing that the Telco Systems portfolio is ideally suited to their needs for deploying Carrier Ethernet in the access and edge network."

The EANTC created a full-fledged MPLS backbone, aggregation and edge network of "massive scale and diversity" during the event. The test bed included 10Gigabit optics between core router vendors, interoperability of various new IEEE standards for Ethernet resilience and OAM, and provided mock users with multicast IPTV content. The interoperability event provides valuable feedback to technical committees and standards bodies regarding the readiness of standards for real world deployment.

The EANTC has produced a Multi-Vendor Carrier Ethernet Interoperability Event white paper, which includes the results of the testing. The paper may be downloaded at: http://www.eantc.de/fileadmin/eantc/downloads/events/2000-2006/ cewc06/EANTC-CEWC06-WhitePaper.pdf . (Due to the length of this URL, it may be necessary to copy and paste it into your Internet browser's URL address field. You may also need to remove an extra space in the URL if one exists.)

The Carrier Ethernet World Congress 2006 is the official conference of the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF), a global alliance of 80 telecommunications organizations.

ABOUT TELCO SYSTEMS

Based in Foxboro, Massachusetts, Telco Systems is a leading provider of carrier-class transport and access solutions for IP and TDM networks for carrier, service provider and enterprise markets. Its suite of products includes solutions for Metro Ethernet Access Rings, residential and enterprise VoIP, FTTx, SONET, WiFi and T1 backhaul.

Founded in 1972, Telco Systems' focus is to maximize the power of their customers' networks by integrating transport, access and packet technologies onto industry-leading platforms that meet today and tomorrow's network demands.

Telco Systems is a wholly owned subsidiary of BATM Advanced Communications (London stock exchange ticker symbol: BVC). For more information, please visit Telco Systems' web site at http://www.telco.com.

ABOUT EANTC

The European Advanced Networking Test Center (EANTC) offers vendor-neutral network test facilities for manufacturers, service providers, and enterprise customers. Primary business areas include interoperability, conformance, and performance testing for Ethernet in enterprise and service provider environments, Triple Play, MPLS / IP network technologies and applications. EANTC provides network-related services, consulting and seminars. For more information contact Carsten RossenhEvel, Managing Director, at 49.30.3180595-0 or via e-mail at cross@eantc.com. For more information on the EANTC, visit their web site at http://www.eantc.com.