Planters Selects Copper Mountain

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Copper Mountain Networks, Inc. (Nasdaq:CMTN), a leading provider of intelligent broadband access solutions, today announced that Planters Telephone Cooperative, a leading Independent Operating Company (IOC) in Georgia, has selected the VantEdge 3000 Access Broadband Remote Access Server (BRAS) to replace its aging legacy Subscriber Management System. Planters Telephone plans to use the VantEdge as a key platform for offering new advanced services beginning with tiered bandwidth.

Tiered bandwidth services have emerged as a powerful way to both increase subscriber satisfaction and service provider revenue: subscribers pay for the bandwidth they want and can afford, and service providers can upsell both dial-up subscribers to broadband and existing broadband subscribers to higher bandwidth tiers as they introduce new services. The operational challenge has been how to quickly and cost-effectively process tiered services orders across a multi-vendor DSLAM network.

"We wanted to standardize on one simple method of implementing tiered services across our network that was managed centrally," said Dessie Carter, Assistant Plant Manager at Planters Telephone. "This wasn't possible with the different DSLAMs we had in our network or by using our existing SMS. The VantEdge is the perfect vehicle for us because it allows us to change bandwidth for our customers at any time from a central workstation."

"As envisioned by the DSL Forum's TR-059 specification on IP Quality of Service (QoS) for advanced services, the key to deploying such services, including tiered bandwidth, is software control at an intelligent aggregation point -- the BRAS," said Mark Tiedeman, Vice President of Marketing at Copper Mountain Networks. "We are delighted that Planters Telephone selected the VantEdge to both scale their broadband network and provide the foundation for advanced services."

The VantEdge's advanced QoS capabilities allow service providers to classify traffic on their network and appropriately prioritize it and manage the associated bandwidth -- all necessary functions to ensure the end user realizes the experience expected of the service they are using. Operationally, the VantEdge's powerful, easy-to-use GUI management system allows service providers to create a few service profiles, indicate which profile each user should use, and configure all of this on the fly without a service interruption.

Copper Mountain Networks Inc.