Its flagship product, said Ethernet product manager Eric Knapp, is the Multiple Access Loop Carrier (MALC), a modular device supporting a wide range of technologies including TDM, ADSL, SHDSL and T1/E1.

It’s an extremely flexible telco box for circuit-to-packet migration, said Knapp.

The new EtherActive Fiber to the Premise (FTTP) products from Zhone include the Optical Line Terminal box, which supports up to 10 business or residential subscribers per blade with 10/100/1000 service over either copper or single/dual mode fiber, mixing and matching copper and fiber on the same card.

The EtherActive technology is also available in the form of line cards for the MALC, making it possible for carriers using the Zhone BLC to offer Ethernet over fiber, as well as over bonded copper pairs (a technology known as enhanced SHDSL, or eSHDSL) and Ethernet-over-T1/E1 in the company’s portfolio.

As part of the acquisition of rival BLC vendor Paradyne Networks Inc in September last year, Zhone got an Ethernet capability, since the previous year Paradyne had bought Net to Net Technologies Inc, which had copper bonding technology for ATM-based DSL and had become Paradyne’s Ethernet R&D facility.

Net to Net had been shipping Ethernet over SHDSL in a proprietary format as long ago as 1999/2000, Knapp recalled, and under Paradyne work had already been done to develop a standards-based version, in line with the IEEE’s EFM spec of late 2004.

In April Zhone launched the EtherXtend portfolio to deliver cost-effective high bandwidth Ethernet services over existing copper loops. The eSHDSL product line consists of a CPE box and headend chassis products, as well as line cards for the MALC.

The technology enables the delivery of up to 5.7Mbps of bandwidth per bonded copper pair, with eight pairs (the normal limit within a binder, as other pairs will be occupied with different services) enabling over 45Mbps. In Ethernet-over-T1/E1, said Knapp, we can deliver 2Mbps per line, so with eight lines you can get 16Mbps of bandwidth.

This range of EFM access into the MALC (fiber, eSHDSL and T1/E1) is, in Knapp’s opinion, a differentiator for Zhone. T1/E1 lines (a.k.a. DS1 lines) tend to be more widely deployed than SHDSL, Knapp noted, because the technology is repeatable, making it the business medium of choice, whereas the 24,000ft limitation on SHDSL makes it a less ubiquitous option, though the bandwidths achievable with it are greater.

Given the choice, people want fiber where it’s available, SHDSL where it’s not, or DS1 where they can’t get either, Knapp explained.