The Eastex Telephone Cooperative, which serves 11 counties in Eastern Texas, is undertaking a major broadband upgrade and has selected ADTRAN’s Total Access 5000 MSAP platform. It’s a nice win for ADTRAN, especially for a tier 3 provider, considering Eastex has 200 remote locations.
“ADTRAN’s Total Access 5000 will allow Eastex to meet subscribers’ demand for a wide variety of services for years to come,” said Rusty Dorman, assistant manager, Eastex Telephone Cooperative, Inc. Eastex was an existing ADTRAN customer and began deploying their platform several years ago.
Eastex has 21 exchanges, 200 miles of fiber optic and 4,000 route miles of buried cable, and serves approximately 30,000 subscribers in eleven counties. This broadband upgrade is helping Eastex shorten their copper loops with a goal of being able to provide at least 10 Mb/s downstream connectivity via DSL to their customers.
ADTRAN is in fierce competition with Calix/Occam for these types of tier 3 broadband upgrades. Other competitors include Zhone, Enablance, and Alcatel-Lucent, among others. The broadband stimulus program has provided a windfall of sorts for these broadband access vendors, but as this deal demonstrates, there’s still non-stimulus business to be had.
