draw your own conclusions:
NOVEMBER 17, 2003
PREVIOUS NEWS WIRE FEED
AFC Signs Verizon FTTP Letter
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PETALUMA, Calif. -- Advanced Fibre Communications®, Inc. (AFC®) (Nasdaq: AFCI - message board), today announced that it has signed a Letter of Agreement with Verizon which outlines key terms of a pending contract for Fiber-to-the-Premises (FTTP) equipment. Verizon and AFC have also entered into a separate lab trial agreement. AFC and Verizon intend to begin lab trials immediately followed by field trials of AFC’s FiberDirectSM solution.
“Fiber-to-the-Premises is the next generation of access technology to deliver advanced voice, data, and multi-media services,” said Paul Lacouture, president of Verizon’s Network Services group. “The deployment of FTTP technology will greatly enrich the lives of Verizon’s customers, delivering unlimited bandwidth and quality of service that will be unmatched by any service provider in the industry.”
“AFC is very pleased to be working with Verizon on this important network initiative which will be using both our central office and customer premises electronics for Verizon’s FTTP rollout,” said John Schofield, chairman, president and CEO at AFC. “Our FiberDirect solution will position us to take advantage of the momentum that FTTP is gaining in the marketplace.”
At the foundation of AFC’s FiberDirect solution is the Company’s industry-leading AccessMAX™ platform. With just a simple addition of AFC’s passive optical networking (PON) plug-in card, service providers like Verizon can quickly upgrade their existing AccessMAX platforms to optical line terminals (OLTs).
“Building our FTTP solution on our market-proven AccessMAX platform, and adhering to the industry FSAN and ITU standards, allowed us to deliver a powerful combination that will lower both first costs and operational costs,” commented Schofield. “The depth of our deployed base also gives us a distinct advantage. We believe that AFC has the largest installed base of FTTP-capable systems, with more than 100,000 AccessMAX platforms already deployed.” |
