SBC Services Inc., a subsidiary of SBC Communications Inc., will use AFC’s AdvancedVoice and UniversalDSL solutions through a new agreement between the companies.
“This new agreement extends a long-standing relationship between the companies, building upon AFC’s strong support of SBC initiatives to aggressively deploy broadband services,” says John Schofield, chairman, president and CEO of AFC. “This agreement expands our addressable market to include large line size and adjunct DSL applications, as well as residential and business fiber access. With these solutions, SBC can seamlessly and cost-effectively evolve its existing infrastructure to faster, more scalable next-generation networks that will deliver a broader range of advanced voice and high-speed broadband services.”
Delivering narrowband, wideband, and broadband services, AFC’s AdvancedVoice solution enables the evolution of carrier networks at their own pace, regardless of shifts in the regulatory environment or market trends. Carriers can maximize their existing network investments, while providing a simple and cost-effective path to total packetization of their access networks.
AFC’s UniversalDSL solution can be deployed in both integrated (voice plus DSL) and overlay (DSL only) applications. The company’s installed base of AccessMAX systems — more than 100,000 — provides a foundation for carriers to deploy AFC’s FiberDirect FTTP solution.
“We’re seeing aggressive deployment of DSL from both central offices and remote terminals by the nation’s RBOCs, as evidenced by SBC’s recently disclosed net gain of nearly half a million DSL lines in the first quarter,” comments Teresa Mastrangelo, program director of broadband access at research and analyst firm RHK. “This is a growing trend that will benefit AFC, which has been selling its AccessMAX IMAPs into regional Bell accounts for many years.”
