ANTEC and Nortel Networks Announce Cable Telephony Agreement With AT&T
DULUTH, Ga., Feb. 23 /PRNewswire/ -- ANTEC (Nasdaq: ANTC - news) and Nortel Networks (NYSE: NT - news) announced today that ANTEC has entered into a comprehensive agreement with AT&T's Broadband unit through which AT&T will use Arris Cornerstone cable telephony products to expand its cable telephony service in eight major North American markets. (Arris is a Nortel Networks/ANTEC joint venture company.) Under the terms of the agreement, ANTEC will be the exclusive supplier of cable telephony products to the AT&T
Broadband markets of Chicago, San Francisco, Denver, Dallas, Hartford, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, and Seattle.
This agreement will enable AT&T Broadband to continue to rapidly expand its cable telephony service in these markets.
``Our agreement to use Arris Cornerstone products will help us scale our telephony offers to hundreds of thousands of customers this year and to millions next year,' said Curt Hockemeier, executive vice president and chief operating officer of telephony operations at AT&T Broadband. ``That scaling, in turn, is already helping us significantly lower our capital costs per subscriber.'
``We are very pleased with the technical features and reliability of the current Arris product, which we started
testing more than four years ago, and we look forward to trials of the new Arris IP products and capabilities that
are planned for delivery later this year,' said Tony Werner, executive vice president and chief technology officer at
AT&T Broadband. ``We are particularly impressed with the PacketPort© approach, which combines the service and quality features of today's VoicePort© with the functionality of a DOCSIS 1.1 modem. This new generation of Cornerstone products will help us elegantly and cost effectively migrate to full IP telephony solutions. The ANTEC / Nortel team has proven itself to be a premier technology partner for AT&T Broadband in its strategic roll-out of new services for consumers,' Werner said.
``This agreement represents a major milestone for all of our companies,' said Bob Stanzione, ANTEC president
and CEO. ``For ANTEC and Nortel Networks, it reinforces the position of Arris as the premier provider of cable
telephony equipment worldwide. We have spent much of the past year installing more than 1100 Cornerstone Host
Digital Terminals (HDTs) with the capacity to provide over 3.6 million cable telephony lines in these eight markets
in preparation for AT&T's announced local telephony roll-out. For AT&T, this agreement underscores its shift into a higher-gear deployment of additional HDTs and more importantly, the delivery of and installation of large
numbers of VoicePorts© to support their plans for rapid subscriber growth,' concluded Stanzione.
ANTEC Corporation (http://www.antec.com) is an international communications technology company serving the
broadband information transport industries. ANTEC specializes in the manufacturing, materials management and
distribution of products for hybrid fiber/coax broadband networks, as well as the design and engineering of these
networks. Headquartered in Duluth, Georgia, ANTEC has sales offices in Europe, Asia/Pacific and Latin America;
major divisional offices in Duluth, Georgia and Denver, Colorado; and manufacturing facilities in Juarez, Mexico, El
Paso, Texas, Tinton Falls, New Jersey and Rock Falls, Illinois.
Forward looking statements: The statements in this press release that use such words as ``believe,' ``expect,'
``intend,' ``anticipate,' ``contemplate,' ``estimate,' or ``plan' or similar expressions are forward-looking statements.
Our business is dependent upon general economic conditions as well as competitive, technological, and regulatory developments and trends specific to our industry and customers. These conditions and events could be substantially different than we believe or expect and these differences may cause our actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements we have made or the results, which could be expected to accompany such statements.
Specific factors which could cause such material differences include the following: Design or manufacturing defects in our products which could curtail sales and subject us to substantial costs for removal, replacement and
reinstallation of such products; manufacturing or product development problems that we do not anticipate because
of our relative experience with these activities; an inability to absorb or adjust our costs in response to lower sales
volumes than we anticipate; unanticipated costs or inefficiencies from the ongoing consolidation of certain of our
activities; loss of key management, sales or technical employees; decisions by our larger customers to cancel
contracts or orders as they are entitled to do or not to enter into new contracts or orders with us because of
dissatisfaction, technological or competitive changes, changes in control or other reasons; and inability as a result of
our relative experience to deliver construction services within anticipated costs and time frames which could cause
loss of business, operating losses and damage claims. The above listing of factors is representative of the factors
which could affect our forward-looking statements and is not intended as an all encompassing list of such factors. In
providing forward-looking statements we are not undertaking any obligation to update publicly or otherwise these
statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
Nortel Networks had 1998 revenues of US$17.6 billion and serves carrier, service provider and enterprise
customers globally. Today, Nortel Networks is creating a high-performance Internet that is more reliable and faster
than ever before. It is redefining the economics and quality of networking and the Internet through Unified
Networks* that promise a new era of collaboration, communications and commerce. Visit us at
www.nortelnetworks.com
Arris is a Nortel Networks/ANTEC venture company headquartered in Duluth, Georgia with over 350,000
working lines of Cornerstone telephony currently deployed with more than 26 operators in 42 cities in 11 global
markets. With capacity for over 7 million telephone or data lines already shipped worldwide, Arris is clearly the
market leader in cable telephony and Internet transport solutions.
* Nortel Networks, the Nortel Networks Globemark, Unified Networks and
How the world shares ideas are trademarks of Nortel Networks.
SOURCE: ANTEC Corporation
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