PacketFront
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| PacketFront | |
| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | Aug, 2001 |
| Headquarters | Kista, Stockholm, Sweden |
| Key people | CEO: Martin Thunman |
| Industry | Networking Equipment |
| Products | Routers, Network Provisioning systems |
| Employees | 180+ (Q1 2007) |
| Slogan | The pioneers of open-access broadband. Transforming communities and broadband businesses. Everywhere. |
| Website | www.packetfront.com |
PacketFront is a leader in FTTH technology and next generation broadband aggregation. Its unique combination of central control and automation systems and advanced routers power some of the most demanding broadband networks in the world. PacketFront’s solutions also uniquely enable new business models such as open access networks, where multiple content providers deliver competing services over the same physical infrastructure. The company is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, and has offices in Boston, Oslo and Amsterdam.
The pioneers of open-access broadband networking
Imagine this.
You turn on your PC or TV at home and bring up a menu listing the competing TV, phone, movie, internet, gaming, health care and other services available on your broadband network. You click on the services you want from the providers of your choice and you get those services immediately. No waiting. No lengthy installation times. And, due to healthy competition and the way we designed your broadband network, your overall monthly costs are much less than what you pay today.
This is what an Open Access broadband network powered by PacketFront does for an end user. Our solutions are transforming communities and broadband businesses around the world.
Built on experience
PacketFront was founded in 2001 by the visionaries behind some of the world’s largest triple-play fiber networks of the 1990s. Like many pioneering business efforts, these early initiatives did not go as planned. The manual deployment and management of multiple services to thousands of broadband users caused operational expenses to soar. Meanwhile revenues fell as bandwidth pricing began to commoditize. In short, the technologies and business models that were used were built for an era of the past.
Changing an industry paradigm
The technologies and business models of the 1990s were all about creating, deploying, managing and billing for connections. Through their experiences in these pioneering efforts, the founders of PacketFront realized that convergence – that is, the delivery of many services over one connection – was changing the requirements of the industry. Whether you were seeking to use broadband to promote local economic development or simply trying to maximize profitability, it was no longer enough to deploy, sell and manage connections quickly and efficiently. The challenge was now how to innovate, deploy, market and manage new services as rapidly and efficiently as possible.
Open Access – maximizing service innovation
Let’s say you owned a road and you wanted to maximize the number of goods and services sold on your road. Which would be the fastest and most efficient way to do so – close the road to other businesses and invent all the goods and services yourself or open up the road for use by as many entrepreneurs as possible? Which way would create the most jobs? Which way would create the most total wealth? If you answered “open up”, you are right.
If an infrastructure is open for others to sell their goods and services over, we call it Open Access. Regardless of whether it is roads, airports, or broadband connections, if you want to maximize innovation in services, Open Access is the way to go. However, while the technologies and business models to support Open Access roads and airports have been around for some time, for broadband that has not been the case. In fact, at the turn of the millennium, the solutions of the time couldn’t handle the complexities of efficiently managing the triple play for one company over one network, never mind support the efficient delivery of hundreds of services from hundreds of different companies, all over many different types of connections. The world had neither the business models nor the technologies needed to support Open Access broadband networks. They had to be invented.
Our solutions
What is fewest number of staff needed to successfully operate an automated Open Access network? How does a service provider on an Open Access network provide end-user support when they do not own the network? Could a new service be created, deployed, and marketed in minutes rather than weeks or months? Could an end user use a web page to select their services from multiple different companies? Could an end user take their voice service from one provider and their video from another? Who would pay who? How much? When? How? Could an end user design their own services on the fly? Could the deployment of new services be automated over any mix of fiber, wireless, DSL, BPL and Coax connections? What business models best support innovation in local services?
These were just a few of the challenges we set out to solve when we invented our Open Access solution in 2001. More than just technology, we’ve also developed a body of knowledge and an eco-system of partners that gives our customers access to the best practices in Open Access around the world. So whether it is designing the business models and technologies needed to make a triple-play fiber network profitable, or providing an end-to-end “turnkey” Open Access network designed specifically to maximize economic and social development, we’ve built our success on ensuring our customers achieve their goals.
Award-winning results
As a result of our approach, today PacketFront is a world leader in developing, designing, and operating Open Access fiber networks. Our customers include the largest and most successful municipal and utility fiber networks in the world, as well as property developers, carriers and cable companies. Several of these customers have won prestigious industry awards such as “Municipal Area Network of the Year”, “Most Advanced Fiber to the Premise Network”, “Best Use of Fiber to Bridge the Digital Divide”, and “FTTH and FTTB with Most Advanced IP Services”. The list keeps growing.
We too have won many awards and accolades for our solutions, including the 2006 International Engineering Consortium’s InfoVision Award for our innovative approach to creating and managing Open Access networks.
Our commitment
But we aren’t done yet. We are committed to continually driving innovation in technical and business solutions for Open Access networks. As the environment changes, we will be one step ahead, helping our customers take full advantage of the opportunities and avoiding the threats. Because whether it is technology, economics, or broadband services, we are committed to turning our solutions, our knowledge and our relationships into our customers’ ongoing success. Proven in over 150 communities around the world, we are on a mission to open up the world of broadband – and empower citizens. Everywhere.
