telecoms-mag.com
"In this industry it's not easy to be thought of as being in a class by yourself. If
any company can make that claim, it's Turnstone Systems. The Mountain
View, Calif.-based company, which went public in January, has captured the
attention of CLECs hoping to quickly deploy and maintain DSL services. In
fact, the nascent company counts more than 25 large regional and national
CLECs as customers. And if management bought each employee a leather
jacket when Turnstone celebrated its first $1 million month, what do they get
now that the company is posting $10 million months?
What's the big deal with Turnstone? For starters, they've changed the whole
DSL installation process with the first solution designed from the ground up to
provide comprehensive management of the copper plant for DSL services. The
company's flagship Copper CrossConnect CX 100 enables a higher percentage
of working installations by giving CLECs the ability to qualify DSL loops and
keep a record of the spectral history and condition of a particular binder group.
As DSL rollouts continue and more and more variables go into loop groups,
CLECs can point to this data if there are interference issues with ILECs.
Better yet, Turnstone has moved beyond loop qualification to remote
automated testing, helping CLECs reduce truck rolls. "They have automated
the whole cross-connect process," said John Freeman, vice president of
research for The Fearless Group. "CLECs don't have the resources to put
people in every central office all the time. So this type of automation is
extremely valuable to them."
While Turnstone may want to keep an eye on the rear-view mirror, for now
there is no competition in sight. "It's hard to differentiate them from
competitors because there's no one out there doing what they are doing," said
TeleChoice analyst Claudia Bacco. Freeman agrees: "There's a lot of testing
equipment out there, but none of it is really designed for DSL as a solution.
That's why this company really stands out." |
