Narad Networks, a leading provider of Carrier Ethernet solutions for the access network, and Stratsoft LLC, a communications industry business and technology consultancy, will present research and analysis at the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) Business Services Symposium that clearly illustrates the dramatic advantage that cable's fiber network has over rival telephone companies.

The focus of the joint talk is the cell backhaul opportunity for cable operators. In the talk, Narad and Stratsoft will provide a granular analysis of cell carriers backhaul needs in terms of bandwidth and network performance. Fiber capabilities of cable operators, incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs, e.g. Verizon) and competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) are then reviewed in terms of geography and associated cost to reach the cell operators towers. Through this analysis, the exceptional depth and corresponding powerful competitive economic and technical advantage of cable's existing fiber network becomes exceedingly clear.

"When we consider the needs of geographically distributed applications such as cellular telephony and Wimax, the cable industry's fiber network has major advantages," said Michael Tattersall, CEO of Stratsoft. They have deployed their fiber very deeply across residential geographies with fiber access points serving an average of 500 homes throughout the country. Telco fiber, in contrast, is highly concentrated around commercial corridors and highways and is generally much less dense in residential areas."

"Narad Networks new fiber-based HFC Ethernet switches are designed to enable cable operators to make maximum use of this fiber advantage with fiber trunking and fiber, coax or wireless connections to the end user," said Michael Collette, CEO of Narad Networks. "With off the shelf Ethernet components, MSOs can add 10s of Gigabits of Carrier-class, standards-based Ethernet on a node by node basis to serve cell towers, WiMAX radios, schools, hospitals and municipal facilities - all of which are found in residential geographies."

For a copy of the graphic or excerpts of the presentation, please send a request to info@naradnetworks.com

For full details of the study or to find out more about Stratsoft LLC, please visit www.stratsoftllc.com. 

About Narad Networks
Narad Networks is a provider of switched broadband access solutions that enable cable operators to leverage existing coaxial cable and flexibly use fiber and wireless media to deliver high capacity, high performance IP services, including voice, data, video, and enterprise networks. The company's QoS switches and service management software, along with its broad spectrum fiber and coax transmission technologies, support multi-gigabit transport for both commercial and residential customers. Narad's patented Ethernet-over-Coax solution meets the needs of coax-based users that have voice or data needs beyond that which cable modems can offer, while Narad's switched Ethernet-over-Fiber solution provides unprecedented IP capacity to fiber-based customers. Narad is currently deployed with North American and European cable operators.

Based in Westford, Massachusetts, Narad is a privately held company with venture funding from Argo Global Capital, Polaris Venture Partners and other leading venture capital firms.

About Stratsoft
Stratsoft provides a unique approach to strategic planning in complex, fast-changing markets. Its specialty is creating advantage from changes in a company's external business environment. Stratsoft gathers and interprets data about the client, industry supply and demand, the client's supplier and channel partners, direct and indirect competition, adjacent businesses, and other influential organizations, creating a unified business intelligence database. Mapping software and other data visualization methods are combined with systematic analysis to explore and evaluate business development and market opportunities.Working in close collaboration with its client, Stratsoft's evaluation methods incorporate all perspectives of macro- and micro- analysis. The results are transferable to the client as a strategic analysis toolset that contains the detail for both far-reaching strategic imperatives and well-specified action plans. Stratsoft has developed analytical and marketing software tools to analyze and represent business opportunities in cable television commercial markets as well as network planning tools that enable detailed quantified evaluation of wireless backhaul and access businesses.