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CHICAGO--After five years of development since its launch in 1999, Simpler Networks launched a product this week aimed at the heart of the central office: the main distribution frame. The EZ-MDF is a micro-electromechanical system that automates the physical cross-connect and ties into the provisioning process.

The company also announced its first customer trial, which will start later this summer with two major service providers. The product leverages existing copper plant and allows carriers to use the EZ-MDF to do loop validation and activation and to automate the provisioning process.

“It’s not a sexy technology--its meat and potatoes--but there’s no way a next-gen carrier can do without it,” said Harry Carr, CEO of Simpler Networks.

Unlike other attempts to automate the MDF using robotics, Montreal-based Simpler Networks uses MEMS, or micro-electromechanical technology, which is 200 times faster than conventional relays. The system is non-blocking and can scale from a few hundred lines to more than 300,000.

Carr has led two other start-ups--Tellium, which he took public and merged with Zhone Technologies, and Yurie Systems, where he was president and chief operating officer. Before his start-up days, he was president and COO of Lucent Technologies’ data networking division and held executive positions at AT&T.

Carr said there is a lot of customer pull for this product, which he said will help him take Simpler Networks from a research and development company to a whole and viable one.

The EZ-MDF can also help carriers cope with spikes in moves, adds and changes in certain regions, “like the snowbirds coming to Florida in the winter,” said Michel SansChagrin, vice president of product management at Simpler networks.

The product also can be deployed as a remote cross-connect. “There is not one carrier we have talked to about putting one in the central office who has said it didn’t also want one in field,” Carr said.