HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- ADTRAN®, Inc., (NASDAQ:ADTN - News), a leading provider of next-generation networking solutions, today announced that Rice Belt Telephone, a progressive independent telephone company based in Arkansas, has selected the Total Access® 5000 for its Fiber-to-the-Premises (FTTP) deployments. This build-out will allow Rice Belt to offer customers unsurpassed bandwidth capacity for next-generation service delivery.

Providing industry-leading services to northern Arkansas, Rice Belt Telephone selected ADTRAN because of its leadership in the access space, strong financial health and superior solution - the Total Access 5000, one of the most technologically advanced solutions in the industry.

“ADTRAN presented a solution that will allow us to provide our customers the most advanced services over the next 20 years,” said Bob Pierson, president, Rice Belt Telephone. “We looked at several access vendors and none could provide us with a solution as advanced as ADTRAN's Total Access 5000. Coupling that with ADTRAN's proven financial history and 10 year warranty made the decision an easy one. We had to ensure that the vendor we selected would be stable and secure and that's exactly what we have with ADTRAN.”

“We are pleased to be the FTTP vendor of choice for Rice Belt Telephone,” said P. Steven Locke, vice president of sales, service providers, ADTRAN Carrier Networks Division. “The Total Access 5000 and Total Access 300 Series ONTs are perfect solutions for service providers like Rice Belt who seek flexible, cost-effective solutions for next-generation service delivery. Their network migration enables the access network to handle bandwidth-intensive applications with the extraordinary capacity of GPON. We are getting an incredible amount of traction with our FTTP solutions as service providers ready themselves for the bandwidth hurdles of tomorrow, and GPON is the logical standards-based solution for this challenge.”

The ADTRAN Total Access 5000 is a carrier class multi-service access and aggregation platform that bridges the gap between existing and next-generation networks. With an all-Ethernet core, the Total Access 5000 supports both legacy and emerging service interfaces over copper and fiber, easily scaling to support bandwidth intensive applications. This scalable Ethernet architecture allows carriers to use the Total Access 5000 to address both legacy and next-generation services economically while providing a seamless path toward a converged network.

Adtran Inc. (Nasdaq: ADTN)