Hatteras Believes Actelis’ Backhaul Advantage Leaves A Lot to be Desired

Implications: 1.      Hatteras acknowledges that Actelis probably has made developments in adaptive timing that are better than the de facto standards. 2.      However, Hatteras states that in delivering native TDM over bonded copper, it achieves the highest level of performance available. 3.      The supplier also believes that Actelis’ capabilities for Ethernet over Copper (EoC) are heads and shoulders above Adtran.

Analysis:  Hatteras argues that it provides the exact performance in clocking timing that one would get out of leaving a T1 in place with its Big Flexible Pipe (BFP).  (According to a recent article in Light Reading, “BFP...won't be formally announced until the Fall.”)  Hatteras asserts it is hard to beat what is the highest level of performance available for latency, jitter, and clock timing.  

While Hatteras admits that if one loses all the copper pairs but one on the Actelis equipment -- that it is a good thing that the timing stays intact, the former claims that the latter has too many other points of failure including the lack of uplink redundancy.  Hatteras also says it is the only company in the industry that is able to do what it calls cross-box bonding, which means one can take any pair off any of the switches and be able to put them in a bonding group – so if a switch or pair is lost, there is no loss of service.  In addition, Hatteras implies that Actelis’ development of its cross-card bonding is not going so well – and that pairs that get dropped cannot be added to their bonded groups quickly enough – resulting in a negative service impact.  

Despite the criticism, Hatteras believes that Actelis’ entry into mobile backhaul is well   timed given the urgent opportunity.  Hatteras expects that activity is going to happen much faster in Europe than in North America because there is readily available local line unbundling in the former.  The countries in Europe are much smaller so the carriers are used to having colos operating outside of their territory.   

And although Hatteras is even more negative on Adtran’s EoC capabilities, the former believes the latter is an outstanding company in the U.S. – and that is why Adtran is placed at the top of the list of Hatteras’ biggest threats.  Moreover, Hatteras sees Adtran’s entry in a big way into the market as legitimizing the space.