Actelis Believes that it will Eat Hatteras’ Lunch in Backhaul

Implications: 1.      Some wireless providers, apparently including Vodafone, are looking for an integrated Ethernet over Copper (EoC) backhaul solution that includes both TDM and packet traffic. 2.      Actelis argues that Hatteras offers just an overlay network with its (EoC) device. 3.      Actelis admits that not all carriers will be attracted to its way of providing backhaul.

Analysis:  Actelis is testing out the mobile backhaul application in its Ethernet over Copper (EoC) solution in a number of customer labs (and may even be field trialing in some cases).   At first glance, it appears that the vendor has just added IEEE 1588 sync capabilities to its box. The pseudowire implementation is fully standards based.  However, both its clock synchronization and its FPGA implementation were developed in-house and a patent is pending.  

Actelis asserts that for the most part, Hatteras has been pushing EoC for backhaul as  only delivering data to base stations.  Actelis acknowledges this is a key application and that it has had success itself with this overlay approach.  But the supplier believes that it has limited applicability.  Actelis says it is converging the TDM circuits, which is already on the copper with packet traffic, with pseudowire.   While the supplier knows that Hatteras has been talking about a circuit emulation solution, Actelis expects it will have challenges in dealing with synchronization and holdover problems.  

Actelis asserts that unlike alternative solutions it will continue to deliver very accurate synchronization, if all but one of its copper pairs go down, and there will be no loss of traffic connectivity with the base station.  The supplier say its holdover implementation, such as the case of all of the cooper pairs being cut, is advantageous because its clock will be maintained on a remote ML650 to keep that base station from going down.  In effect, the base station comes online as soon as the data is restored.  Actelis states that one of the significant reasons that carriers do not want to use other pseudowire solutions is the long amount of time (as much as an hour) it takes to resynchronize and bring the network back up.  

It would be reasonable for skeptics to think back on other technologies in which all of a sudden the mobile backhaul card is played.  Actelis knows that it has to prove its claims in the actual marketplace.  And the supplier does not see its product as revolutionizing the mobile backhaul space – just helping it along.  In addition, it concedes that there will be some carriers that will still want an overlay network because they are not copper-pair constrained and they are fine with keeping legacy TDM circuits up and using EoCjust to do the data.