Meriton acquisition of Mahi enhances product and expands geographic reach

Meriton Networks Inc. is looking to more aggressively target a broader market, something the Ottawa firm can do now following its acquisition of Mahi Networks Inc. While the optical network provider preaches the necessity of a "future-proof" infrastructure for its telecom service provider customers, Meriton has invested in its own future by better equipping itself to service the industry’s switch to broadband technology. "The acquisition of Mahi really has two benefits," Meriton president and CEO, Michael Pascoe, tells Network Letter. "First, it allows us to move ahead aggressively at introducing feature functionality to our product line. Second, it brings together a group of talented people within our company." The merged company, which has locations in the USA, Europe, Asia Pacific and Canada (Ottawa), will be known as Meriton Networks, with former Mahi president Bill Gartner assuming the role of COO. Technologically, the acquisition of Mahi places Meriton at the forefront of optical network providers, allowing it to introduce a "unified" infrastructure capable of serving both consumer and enterprise customers. The key to this unified infrastructure is the addition of Mahi’s multi-service system (now called the 6400 Optical Transport Platform), which has already been in use in the industry for more than two years. With this addition, Meriton can provide a network with more useable bandwidth than it previously could. The ability to maintain an optical signal throughout the infrastructure results in lower costs and requires little manual intervention. "Most of the competition doesn’t have this stand-alone switching technology," says Pascoe. He cites Fujitsu and Tellabs as Meriton’s most advanced competitors, adding, "we aren’t alone with the level of technology we can offer, but we feel that we’ve put ourselves in some very select company." The merger gives the combined entity greater market breadth as well. "Mahi was coming at the industry from a different perspective," continues Pascoe. "They were serving one part of the market and we were serving the other, with a little bit of overlap. With the combination of the two services we can offer what could be described as a ‘best-breed’ solution. This allows us to address the market in a much more effective manner; we can more aggressively go after a broader market. " Because the 6400 OTP can handle 10 Gbps applications, Meriton can pursue customers it previously didn’t have the capacity for; specifically, it can more easily provide the networks necessary for incumbent and competitive carriers offering broadband services like VoIP. Pascoe says Meriton’s networks can now handle some services that they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to for at least 12 more months. "The markets we were trying to address are telephone carriers," he adds, "and most of them are switching to broadband and IP technology." An additional feature of the network offered by Meriton is it can "add capacity to exhausted networks at a much lower cost than other approaches." This will be an important selling point in a market where the explosion of broadband applications is increasing the stress on metro networks. Even though the merger with Mahi better equips Meriton to compete - along with the $54 million in funding it secured in June - Pascoe insists that the company is not concerned about sending a message to competitors. Rather, "we hope the acquisition sends a message to our customers," he says. "We want them to look at this and say ‘these guys are serious.’ Hopefully they will recognize that we are bringing a very complete product solution to the market." And as Meriton suggests of its potential, it seems to be well enabled to compete in the future. "The current product direction of our customers is very IP-centric," says Pascoe. "Obviously the market will evolve again somewhere down the road, but IP technology is as far as anyone can see in the marketplace today."

Meriton acquisition of Mahi enhances product and expands geographic reach

News | 10/12/2005 4:00 am EDT

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