Valley Telephone Cooperative, Inc. (VTCI), an LEC offering telecommunications services in rural South Texas, has upgraded its service delivery network using the Inteleflex broadband loop carrier (BLC) platform -- now from Pannaway Technologies. Using this platform in conjunction with Pannaway’s Service Convergence (News - Alert) Network (SCN) IP access system, the telco can now expand its triple play services, which are delivered through its hybrid FTTH/ADSL2+ network.

VTCI delivers its services to 17 exchanges which cover approximately 7,300 square miles and touch 19 counties.

Pannaway (News - Alert) recently acquired the Inteleflex broadband loop carrier (BLC) platform from TelStrat. With the Inteleflex chassis combined with Pannaway’s carrier grade equipment, VTCI has been able to migrate from an ATM and TDM network to an all-IP network that includes ADSL2+, 2.4 GPON and Gigabit Ethernet. In addition to the IP connected Inteleflex BLC, VTCI is using Pannaway's Broadband Aggregators (BAR) at the transport layer (which deliver Gigabit Ethernet and can easily scale to 10 Gigabits), plus Pannaway’s Broadband Access Switches (BAS) and Residential Gateway (News - Alert) NIDs (RGN). With this equipment in place, it has completed its migration to all-IP based services and has positioned itself as the leader in high-speed broadband in the region.

“Due to the innovation of the Pannaway products, we’ve successfully migrated our ATM core to a next-generation network that is based on IP,” said Richard Cavin, Network Manager for Valley Telephone Cooperative, Inc., in a press release. “We’re proud of the fact that we are the first to deliver DSL Broadband service to 100 percent of our subscribers, and also the first in South Texas to offer Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH). Without the high performance and scalability – both of which are direct results of our new Pannaway network – these milestones would not have been possible.”

“New emerging applications such as HDTV and VoD are driving the need for additional bandwidth for our telco customers,” said Mark Carpenter, president of Pannaway. “We are fully committed to providing complete and flexible solutions that empower our telco customers to easily migrate their networks at their own pace from ATM and TDM to an all IP solution, thereby unleashing a highly scalable and flexible broadband services network that will take them far into the future.”

VTCI deployed Pannaway’s SCN last year. The telco gets its video feeds through the IP-PRIME MPEG-4 satellite video transport service delivered cooperatively through SES AMERICOM (News - Alert), the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association and the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative. The service enables rural telcos like VTCI to receive and distribute hundreds of video channels over DSL, fiber optic and hybrid facilities at reduced capital costs.

Pannaway last made news on TMCnet in August when it announced that it was acquiring the access division of TelStrat International, a provider of wireline access and enterprise telecommunications solutions. The deal led to Pannaway including TelStrat’s Inteleflex broadband loop carrier (BLC) platform, which enables service providers to bridge circuit-switched and packet-based networks to deliver converged voice, video and data communication and entertainment services.

TelStrat is recognized as the first company in North America to deploy next generation 2.4 G-PON based FTTH from a full-service broadband loop carrier platform. The company will now focus on its longstanding Enterprise Business Division and its CallParrot Business Call Recording product line.

For more information, visit www.pannaway.com.

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Patrick Barnard is Associate Editor for Customer Interaction Solutions magazine and Assignment Editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit Patrick Barnard’s columnist page.