Adtran Doubles Down in Europe

Despite seeing softer spending in Europe during Q3, Adtran has increased its bets on that market.

Dan O'Shea, Analyst, Heavyreading.com

October 27, 2014

3 Min Read
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After seeing its revenue from the European market dip in the third quarter, Adtran has made a series of moves in the past week aimed at strengthening its appeal in Europe, as well as highlighting its existing position with major European telcos.

In separate announcements made during the Broadband World Forum 2014 event in Amsterdam, Adtran Inc. (Nasdaq: ADTN) said its 500G Series ultra-broadband G.fast product is now in trials with multiple but unidentified carriers in Europe, North America and Asia/Pacific. It also announced a new product for its NetVanta enterprise Ethernet switch family that is well positioned for European adoption. (See G.fast: The Dawn of Gigabit Copper?)

Also, on the eve of the show, Adtran promoted Ronan Kelly, its business development director for Europe, to the newly created position of CTO for the EMEA and Asia/Pacific regions. (See Adtran Unveils Gigabit Access Router and Adtran Appoints CTO for EMEA, Asia-Pac.)

The European carrier testing G.fast could well be Deutsche Telekom AG (NYSE: DT), as an Adtran official claimed recently that the product would be part of the carrier's TeraStream network project; the vendor, though, is not confirming any operator names related to G.fast. (See Adtran: We're In at TeraStream.)

Adtran is, however, talking up the potential for G.fast and is aiming to have commercial products available during the second quarter of next year. "In my time at Adtran, I have never seen a technology that has generated so much demand for lab trials," Kelly told Light Reading in Amsterdam. "We have bucketloads of trials," he added, noting that while telco trials are positive, "they don't always translate into deployments and orders."

Meanwhile, the NetVanta 5660 Gigabit Access Router, in addition to integrating support for Layer 2/3 services, features quad- and octal-bonded SHDSL and quad VDSL -- technologies that have strong appeal in the European market, according to Barry Derrick, product marketing manager at Adtran.

"Many of our NetVanta products have had a quasi-domestic focus, but this platform has more options that would be viable from an international point of view, like bonded SHDSL," he told Light Reading. "Competitively, we found just a couple of European vendors that were strong on Layer 3 services, but don't have the fully converged approach, so we think we can have an impact."

Adtran is also positioning the new NetVanta box as the company's "first step to virtualization [for Adtran]," noted Kelly, as it enables separation of the data and control planes and lays the ground for support of SDN capabilities such as OpenFlow.

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Most recently, Adtran has seen its fortunes fizzle in the European market, issuing a warning in early October that its third-quarter revenues would be lower than anticipated, largely due to a sequential revenue decrease in Europe. At mid-month, it backed up that warning by posting revenue of $162.9 million for the quarter, within its newly lowered range. (See Lower Revenue in Europe Alters Adtran's Q3.)

Since late 2011, when it moved to acquire NSN's broadband access assets, Adtran has been making a concerted push for greater relevance in Europe and elsewhere abroad. It remains a vitally important market for Adtran and other US vendors, particularly those often seeing their hopes rise and fall on the whims of the two largest US carriers, AT&T and Verizon. Adtran is now hoping for a rebound in Europe in the current quarter and beyond, banking on the expected commercialization of G.fast in 2015, as well as the increasing interest among service providers and enterprises in gigabit services. (See Adtran's Euro Adventure and Adtran Wants NSN's International Pull.)

— Dan O'Shea, Managing Editor, Light Reading

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About the Author

Dan O'Shea

Analyst, Heavyreading.com

You want Dans? We got 'em! This one, "Fancy" Dan O'Shea, has been covering the telecom industry for 20 years, writing about virtually every technology segment and winning several ASBPE awards in the process. He previously served as editor-in-chief of Telephony magazine, and was the founding editor of FierceTelecom. Grrrr! Most recently, this sleep-deprived father of two young children has been a Chicago-based freelance writer, and continues to pontificate on non-telecom topics such as fantasy sports, craft beer, baseball and other subjects that pay very little but go down well at parties. In his spare time he claims to be reading Ulysses (yeah, right), owns fantasy sports teams that almost never win, and indulges in some fieldwork with those craft beers. So basically, it's time to boost those bar budgets, folks!

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