Adtran Inc. (Nasdaq: ADTN) has scored big with AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T), reportedly winning bids for Ethernet over copper and IP DSLAMs.

Both wins were looking "likely" according to a Feb. 7 note from Nikos Theodosopoulos, an analyst with UBS AG . An industry source requesting anonymity has confirmed that Adtran did take both deals.

The wins stem from an Ethernet-over-copper request for proposals (RFP) issued by AT&T in October. Adtran likely won the job because it's an incumbent, with its Total Access 3000 system being ingrained in the former SBC Communications network. The new RFP would likely involve the newer Total Access 5000, access boxes that can be used as IP DSLAMs. (See Adtran Touts Total Access.)

Adtran and AT&T declined to comment for this story.

This would be AT&T's first major foray into Ethernet over copper, a technology that could go hand-in-hand with its fiber-to-the-node plans. The RFP reportedly asked vendors to be prepared to provide Ethernet over copper across 80 percent of AT&T's territory, prior to the merger with BellSouth.

BellSouth made its own Ethernet-over-copper decision late in 2005, picking Hatteras Networks Inc. gear to provide services of 2- to 8-Mbit/s. (See Copper Ethernet Snares an RBOC.) It's unclear whether AT&T's choice of Adtran could affect Hatteras's position. Hatteras officials declined to comment.

On the IP DSLAM side, Adtran's win could be seen as a bruise to Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU), which had been supplying the ATM-based DSLAMs for AT&T's central offices.

But Adtran's win would be confined to the central office; Alcatel-Lucent would likely continue to be the sole source for the DSLAMs used in elsewhere in AT&T's Project Lightspeed deployment, Theodosopoulos wrote. Alcatel-Lucent officials couldn't be reached before press time.

— Craig Matsumoto, West Coast Editor, Light Reading