SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 18, 2014 -- Aviat Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVNW), the leading expert in microwave networking solutions, today announced the Aviat CTR 8000 microwave networking platform, a new solution for simplifying mobile operator networks. The first generally available product in the CTR family is the CTR 8540 microwave router, a new microwave platform that includes a fully featured IP/MPLS router, making it the most highly advanced microwave backhaul product on the market. Aviat has received orders for the CTR 8540 from Osnova Telecom of the Russian Federation and Entel in Chile. Deliveries are scheduled to commence within the coming weeks.

As the industry's only purpose-built microwave router, the CTR 8540 is a truly unique product with a powerful combination of microwave transport, Layer 2 Carrier Ethernet and Layer 3 IP/MPLS routing—all in one box.

"As a microwave platform, CTR 8540 is the most compact and highly integrated solution available," says Michael Pangia, president and CEO, Aviat Networks. "It combines the functionality of five separate devices and supports 50 percent more radio interfaces and twice as many Gigabit Ethernet ports as any other microwave solution and delivers up to 4 Gbps of aggregate capacity per link. This places CTR at the head of the microwave market, even before you add the L3 capability."

"The Aviat CTR microwave router is a great foundation for a long-term partnership with our nationwide LTE operator," says Mikhail Petrov, CEO, Osnova Telecom of the Russian Federation. "It meets the high standards of quality and total cost of ownership that we demand from our partner's solutions."

"As a router, CTR 8540 will enable a range of new IP and VPN services for our mobile backhaul and enterprise applications," says Juan Andres Guzman Barrios, chief of area connectivity and transmission engineering, Entel Chile. "Unlike other microwave radios that require adding an expensive, separate IP/MPLS router, CTR 8540 is the only product we found that integrates the microwave radio and IP routing features we need. As the incumbent carrier in Chile, Entel places importance on reducing the number of devices we provision at each cell site to save space and money. CTR does that for us by combining these two functions in one solution."

Best of all, CTR has an open, software-based architecture, so it can be deployed now as a Layer 2 microwave solution, with IP/MPLS functionality capable of being added when required via simple software upgrade. CTR leverages MPLS traffic engineering to offer SDN (software-defined networking) backhaul resource management and optimization, which provides a practical migration path to SDN architecture over time.

"As they drive new generations of high capacity microwave into the backhaul for 3G and LTE, L2 will not be sufficient for the long term needs of many mobile operators," says Patrick Donegan, senior analyst, Heavy Reading. "In a recent Heavy Reading survey of mobile operators using microwave backhaul, we found that 42 percent of mobile operators believe that L3 is 'very likely' to be needed in the access layer of the backhaul within three years."