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Interview with Kaare Thorsteinsson, CTO and Sales, VisipiaOverviewVisipia, based in a suburb of Copenhagen in Denmark, designs and markets residential gateways, specifically 1 Gbit/s products, featuring optical interfaces. The company developed its first product, a 100 Mbit/s gateway, in 2005 for ComX Networks A/S of Denmark. Visipia is a member of the LG-Nortel (now LG-Ericsson) WDM-PON ecosystem and has integrated the 1 Gbit/s WDM-PON interface into its CPE product. Visipia markets its gateways to utility companies and service providers, primarily in the Scandinavia region. The company has partnerships with several service providers/utilities, and offers its products through a number of distributors. The company is a subsidiary of Danish firm Herstedvang, which is jointly owned by entrepreneurs Finn Helmer and Jesper Jorgensen, each holding a 50% stake. IntroductionFocused solely on fibre-based residential gateways, Visipia's aim is to be the preferred supplier of highly-featured 1 Gbit/s gateways on the market and Kaare Thorsteinsson believes the company is achieving this goal by being one step ahead of the competition. Visipia is currently offering the third generation of its product family, introduced in February 2009 in the form of the 1 Gbit/s L2/3 gateway with wire-speed L3 functionality. The company has also recently launched 100 Mbit/s and 1 Gbit/s-capable products incorporating WDM-PON ECOsystem technology from LG-Nortel through its membership of the initiative. Gateway productsA key benefit of the Visipia solution, according to Mr. Thorsteinsson, is the dual speed support that means the gateway can be used in existing 100 Mbit/s networks and upgraded to 1 Gbit/s when required in the future. The gateway upgrade can be implemented from the network operator's central office and without the need to visit each customer. Aside from the multi-rate capability, the Visipia product also offers a comprehensive software-based feature set. It was noted that production of Visipia's products is outsourced to a contract manufacturer based in Asia. MarketOn the question of market size, Mr. Thorsteinsson commented that sizing the market is very difficult and reliable data for the company's addressable market is not available at present. However, he does expect that 1 Gbit/s will be the 'standard' product within three years as the residential gateway market evolves to higher speed devices utilising the capabilities of fibre networks. In this context, Mr. Thorsteinsson said he is confident that Visipia has the resources, based in part on its ongoing business, to ensure it will be a significant player in the market for 1 Gbit/s products as and when this takes off. Visipia's 'local' market - Denmark and Scandinavia as a whole - is believed to be ahead of the wider market in terms of demand for 1 Gbit/s products due to the region's advanced position with FTTH networks. While the company does also address countries in northern Central Europe, the Scandinavian market focus is primarily due to limited available resources and the company fully intends to broaden its addressable market when it has sufficient resources to do so effectively. CustomersVisipia is currently supplying its products to a number of power utilities in Denmark and has announced SYD ENERGI A/S and Sydfyns Intranet A/S as customers. In 2008, Sydfyns Intranet established a 1 Gbit/s segment in its FTTH network based on Visipia's gateways. Visipia received an order from SYD ENERGI for 15,000 fibre-based 1 Gbit/s gateways in early 2009, of which 10,000 were due to be delivered during 2009. Visipia also provided 1,400 1 Gbit/s gateway products for a FTTH project to enable the delivery of triple play service in Vaerebro, north of Copenhagen. Service was officially launched over the fibre network in April 2009. Regarding potential customers, Mr. Thorsteinsson stated that Visipia's products are suitable for deployment by large carriers whenever they decide to roll out FTTH as an alternative to PSTN-based networks. He noted that the recently announced plans by Google to deploy trial FTTP networks in U.S. cities, supporting delivery of speeds up to 1 Gbit/s, would be a prime application for Visipia's solution. However, he added that Visipia does not currently have any involvement in this project and that engagements of this type would generally be via a partner. PartnersOn the subject of partnerships, Mr. Thorsteinsson said that Visipia is regularly approached by both systems integrators and equipment vendors regarding the possibility of offering its gateway products as part of a network solution. The company is also actively seeking potential channel partners for the supply of its products. To date, Visipia has generally worked with systems integrators when addressing large customers. Working with a systems integrator acting as a single point of contact for a complete, multi-vendor solution, Mr. Thorsteinsson observed, simplifies the engagement from the customer's perspective.  |
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