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Adtran's annual media and analyst event focused on network and business changes required to meet the demands of an 'Uber-like' customer experience.
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Huntsville, Ala., in August is exactly what you'd expect with regard to weather -- very hot and very, very humid -- so much so that my camera and glasses immediately fogged up after stepping out the coach buses hired to haul the press and analysts back and forth from our hotel to the Adtran company HQ.
Once inside the building, things cooled right down and got down to business as CTO Kevin Schneider kicked off the day talking about how Adtran is focused on helping the world transform to a Gigabit infrastructure by defining the future network. "Underlying that mission is not just the cool technology, but also changing the model," he said, adding, "The core element of innovation is the courage to innovate."
The innovations covered at the event focused around the access layer of the network, including technology such as tunable lasers, NG-PON, Gigabit and G.Fast. During the two-day event Adtran also detailed its new software-defined access platform built on an open, multi-vendor approach that supports any of those access technologies. (See Adtran Pieces Together a Software-Defined Access Mosaic.)
Also on the agenda were presentations by CSP customers, including Rocket Fiber, which is focused on delivering gigabit services to Detroit, and Speros from Savannah, Ga. Rocket Fiber's Co-Founder and CTO Randy Foster delivered an inspiring keynote that covered the challenges of delivering Internet services to a city where 56% of residents don't have access to the Internet -- something most of us take for granted today. Foster said that if you take cellphones out of the equation, 40% have no Internet access at all, and added that 70% of students have no Internet access at home. "That puts a crippling effect on a lot of things," he said.
Central office re-architected as a data center (CORD) was also a hot topic at the event -- with demos that tied together Mosaic and CORD, and sessions on tunable optics; network-as-a-service; its ProCloud solution suite; and the demand for "Uber-like," on-demand services that are behind all the technology changes afoot.
The event wrapped with an executive panel which focused on the above changes and the future of the company. Overall, it was a jam-packed two days. You can read more coverage from the event here:
Click on the image below to launch the "slideshow":
Figure 1: Yes Sir Southern hospitality abounds at Adtran and Huntsville in general -- from the friendly greeting by staffers, to the coach bus drivers, to the nice Adtran employee who drove me to the US Space and Rocket Center for a quick gift shop stop. One example that stood out though was the sign at Rosie's Cantina, a local Mexican food favorite. I guess caramel sauce is really good on churros. Yes Sir.
— Elizabeth Miller Coyne, Managing Editor, Light Reading
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