Re: AFCI's $45 Million Contract from LEC CenturyTel
Thread- Hmmm...I thought by the way the market is acting, all telecom infrastructure spending was halted? Well guess not. Last time I looked over the figures just a couple of days ago sounded like worldwide, SPs are still spending $1,000,000,000 per day(!) on telecom upgrades. Looks like AFCI is getting a piece of it from this news.
For those that don't know, AFCI makes a product that brings fiber closer to the customer. IMO, it's a key piece to rolling out DSL broadband services because it solves the DSL distance limitation problem nicely. They run fiber out to a RT and drop in AFC's UMC product. Then attach the copper lines to it that leads to individual customer premises (BTW, one of my favorite stats I like to repeat. Worldwide there are 900,000,000 million copper lines out there today).
Excellant way to utilize all that copper infrastructure out there. It's also a key part of SBC's Project Pronto rollout too. -MikeM(From Florida)
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Advanced Fibre Communications Announces $45 Million Agreement With CenturyTel To Deliver DSL Equipment
PETALUMA, Calif., April 12-- Advanced Fibre Communications©, Inc, a leader in Multi-Service Access Solutions for the telecommunications industry, announced today a multi-year contract to provide digital loop carrier and digital subscriber line (DSL) equipment to CenturyTel, Inc, headquartered in Monroe, Louisiana. CenturyTel is one of the nation's largest local exchange telephone companies, based on number of deployed access lines. The three-year agreement is valued at approximately $45 million and will help to significantly upgrade CenturyTel's existing network infrastructure. CenturyTel plans to extend DSL coverage to more than 40 percent of its existing telephone access lines by the end of this year.
With the agreement, CenturyTel becomes the first independent telephone company in the U.S. to deploy AFC's new standards-based DSL solution. This product overcomes distance barriers faced by solutions that rely upon central office deployment. It offers versatile and modular expansion of xDSL services, without impacting POTS densities, to provide full service to customers served by AFC's Multi-Service Access Platform.
``Over the past four years, we have widely deployed AFC's UMC1000© Multi-Service Access Platform throughout our network,' said Wayne Davis, vice president of engineering for CenturyTel. ``The cost-savings and flexibility to provide totally integrated narrowband and broadband solutions, all managed from a single platform, is the UMC1000's strength. This next-generation technology provides even greater benefits.'
``We are very pleased that the relationship between AFC and CenturyTel continues to prosper and benefit both organizations,' said Mehmet Balos, vice president of global marketing and North American sales for AFC. ``AFC will continue to assist CenturyTel in cost-effectively providing DSL and ATM broadband services to its customers.'
``CenturyTel remains committed to providing leading-edge technologies, such as high speed Internet access to our customers in suburban and rural communities across the U.S.,' Davis said.
Davis added that CenturyTel takes pride in its ability to bring the same broadband services typically found in urban markets to their customers in suburban and rural communities. |
