You know I have never been a great fan of this 3G talk because in MRV’s case the 3G connection has always been more about hype than about real business. I don’t think 3G will result in meaningful revenue for MRV. But yes they have a real product that seems to work.
For those who may not be aware of the MRV-CES connection (You won't find it mentioned in the 10K):
CES History
• Founded in 1981
• High Energy Physics (CERN and other European labs)
• Aerospace (Airbus, Boeing, EADS, DASA,L-3 Com)
• Telecom (Ericsson, Lucent, Nortel, Sony,UTStarcom)
• Acquired by MRV (Nasdaq: MRVC) in 2000
• CES is a 100% owned MRV Company
• The Company headquarters is located in Geneva
• 50 employees, mainly engineers
• In the past 6 years, CES has been awarded major leading North American and European programs in the 3G Cellular industry by being able to deliver ATM transport solutions for UMTS Node B and RNC elements, which package ATM functions in a bundle.
The product/solution:
Considering the 3GPP 5 and 6 release, with the “All IP ”concept, CES next generation platform would be easily reconfigurable to support ATM and IP both simultaneously and separately. Thus increasing the lifetime of the platform throughout future migrations and saving on migration expenses.
The solution is based on a cutting edge network processor, which is fully reconfigurable to cope with the evolving 3GPP standards.
CES has collaborated with Lucent of Mount-Olive, NJ, USA in the development of Lucent ’s RNC and Node-B (BTS) solutions for the Japanese market (i.e. for NTT-DoCoMo).
The technology is built around their ATM switch controller.
The Transport Network Solution (TNS) is an ATM and IP Multi-Service Platform for telecommunication equipment focusing on the Third Generation Cellular (3G) arena, which is based on a state-of-the-art network processor. The TNS has many applications in the 3G UMTS arena although, in addition, it may support other access systems:
• 3G Base Transceiver Stations (Node B)
• 3G Radio Network Controller (RNC)
• 3G Serving GPRS Support Node (SGSN)
• 3G Mobile Switch Center for UMTS (MSCU)
• Media gateways (VoIP, circuit gateway, signaling gateway)
• Multiservice platforms
Nortel has used the CES platform to validate their RNC concept and to perform preliminary UMTS trials for European customers. The platform used consisted of multi-processor single board computers and ATM network interfaces. CES ’ architecture was also used as a reference platform during the development of the Nortel--designed RNC.
CES is also collaborating with a Swedish company (Tieto Enator: tietoenator.com) in the development of a RNC simulator for Ericsson.
The simulator will be used to validate Ericsson ’s BTS product throughout its life cycle, including the stages of development, production and maintenance. The simulator will be used in the Japanese market (i.e. NTT-DoCoMo) and the European markets (various operators).
CES delivers the computing platform, the ATM network interfaces and the Transport Network Layer. Our partner has developed the Radio Network Layer as well as a scripting mechanism, which is used to validate the BTS. CES is responsible for system integration. ……
The revenue from CES is not zero.
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