Dubai, August 1, 2011:  In its efforts to continuously deliver the best customer experience, du today announced its Gigabit-capable Passive Optical Network (GPON) deal with Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC).  

Hatem Bamatraf, Senior Vice President Network Development, du, said: “We firmly believe that dynamic partnerships lead to success. The tie-up with Ericsson for GPON complements our state-of-the-art Fibre to the Home (FTTH) network, which we were the first to deploy in the UAE. This new solution will allow us to offer innovations, like fastest broadband (real broadband) and du TV to our customers. Ericsson’s GPON solution was the obvious choice for us, and we hope that our partnership will further enhance our customers’ user experience.”

Ericsson’s deep fibre access offering consists of Ericsson’s EDA 1500 GPON solution, passive optical components and related services. The network is future-proof for open access, which means that in the coming years, du can implement new business models in which deployment and operations costs are split among different entities.  Through the newly implemented system, du is able to better meet existing subscriber demand for advanced broadband services, while transforming its network into a ready-to-use platform for a new era of communications.

“By turning to us and rolling out the network with the latest GPON technology, du will take advantage of technology to provide media-rich services to homes and businesses in the UAE, which is widely recognised for leading the local fibre revolution being at the forefront of telecommunications advances in the region,” says Ray Hassan, President and Head of Ericsson for Gulf Council Countries (GCC). Consumers today demand an ever-increasing numbers of multimedia services, and this trend is likely to keep growing.”