Twin Valley Picks AFC for IP Video

ATLANTA -- Advanced Fibre Communications®, Inc. (AFC®) (Nasdaq:AFCI) today announced at SUPERCOMM 2003 that Miltonvale, Kan.-based Twin Valley Telephone, Inc. (TVT) will begin offering IP video over ADSL service to its subscribers beginning in June. Using AFC’s Telliant™ 5000 multiservice central office platform and AccessMAX™ —AFC’s broadband loop carrier—TVT is bundling local and long distance telephone, video entertainment, and high-speed Internet connectivity services in a single package (called 1Link™), which will be delivered to subscribers over the telco’s copper wire and fiber-optic cable network. TVT currently provides telephone, DSL and cable TV services from six central office exchanges in a 900-square mile operating area.

“We realized that we were running out of bandwidth and switching capacity,” said Mike Foster, president of Twin Valley Telephone. “With a sharp increase in demand for high-bandwidth services, we ran the numbers and found that the price tag associated with making major capacity improvements to our old network would not be cost effective if we were to just upgrade Internet capacity alone.”

With only 33 percent of TVT’s customers owning computers, but with 100 percent having TVs, the decision became obvious: Video was the common factor triggering a single-package approach. The goal was to be able to offer either ISDL (128Kb/s) or high-speed ADSL (384 Kb/s) Internet connectivity, bundled with two streams of digital-quality TV programming, and a range of voice calling features delivered simultaneously to each subscriber’s home over telephone lines, rather than upgrade the 20-year-old, one-way fiber/coax cable network.

“AFC’s TelcoVideo solution and services portfolio, coupled with IP video equipment from Minerva Networks and Thomson, provides a comprehensive solution in the new era of bundled video, voice and high-speed data services,” said Corey Geiger, vice president of marketing at AFC. “When broadband access systems are strategically placed in the loop network, local operating companies can reduce the distance that signals travel over copper, making it possible to offer TV, high-speed Internet and other broadband services through existing telephone lines. This allows local operating companies to economically deliver bundled services to subscribers in rural areas who traditionally have been beyond the reach of conventional central office-based, high-speed, broadband transmission systems.”

AFC has been working with TVT since 1998, supplying the independent carrier with more than 75 AccessMAX systems. To help deliver the newly bundled services to subscribers, TVT deployed multiple Telliant systems, and plans to add more at the company’s Bennington office during the second phase of the buildout.

“The Telliant systems are performing several functions in TVT’s network, including local IGMP routing,” added Geiger. “This distributed approach to IGMP routing reduces the load placed upon TVT’s backbone transport network and improves the quality of service to video subscribers, as compared to more centralized IGMP implementations.”

In addition to leveraging TVT’s copper loop, AFC has been providing TVT with OC-1, OC-3 and OC-12 optical transport capabilities, as well as using its TransMAX™ 1500 CWDM optical add-drop multiplexers to expand fiber capacity to the town of Culver, which previously did not have cable TV service. TVT also has an OC-48 fiber ring connecting its five exchanges, including an OC-48 spur to the town of Greenleaf.

According to TVT’s Foster, AFC’s AccessMAX and Telliant give his company the necessary bandwidth to transmit digital video signals carrying 60 channels of programming—more than double the number of TV channels available on its cable network. “This breaks down as 35 network TV channels,” added Foster, “plus 10 local TV channels that direct broadcast satellite customers cannot get, along with three pay-per-view channels, and the option of selecting from among 12 premium offerings. The combined service bundle is delivered via a fiber-fed broadband loop carrier system from AFC directly to subscriber homes at the network edge.

“The increased profits that we expect to see are not solely from our new video offering,” continued Foster, “rather from bundling voice—which includes custom calling features and long distance—and high-speed Internet and video services. Every telephone company our size should be looking at this.”

TVT’s video system has attracted the attention of top management at adjacent telephone companies who are talking with the company about the feasibility of connecting their networks to the TVT video headend for a nominal per subscriber monthly fee. In association with AFC, TVT plans to showcase its IP Video over ADSL solution at an open house on July 8-10 in Bennington.

Advanced Fibre Communications Inc. (AFC)