Turin Networks sees CDMA upside in Carrier Access buy

Declines in spending from the former Cingular Wireless, now AT&T, were one of the challenges facing the vendor this year, however. But Turin executives pointed out that some of the merger integration issues that have distracted AT&T in recent quarters have now passed.

In recent months, Carrier Access executives described a number of products in various stages of development or trials, including an enterprise-class router, a Web-based voice-over-IP offering and specialized applications designed for government clients.

“They have a lot advancements in the pipeline that haven’t made it out to the street yet,” said Henry Wasik, Turin’s chief executive officer. “Sometimes you run out of [revenue] run rate. You’re working on things, but the clock dings, and time’s up. For example, by having the pseudowire blade in the Traverse [Turin’s multiservice transport platform], the economics we can drive from a headend aggregation standpoint are way beyond anything you’ll find in the market.”

Carrier Access obtained pseudowire and related other technologies from its $8 million acquisition of Mangrove Systems this spring. Mangrove sold multiprotocol label-switching gear that used generic framing procedure, link capacity adjustment scheme and virtual concatenation techniques as well as pseudowire emulation technology to route a variety of legacy and packet-based traffic such as ATM and Ethernet. Mangrove’s Piranha 100 and 600 products became Carrier Access’s EdgeFlex 100 and 600.

Carrier Access also jointly developed a wireless backhaul offering with Tellabs using the latter’s crossconnects. But the customer for whom the gear was designed reconsidered its options this fall and opted against the joint system. “My understanding is [the joint offering] is still usable,” Wasik said. “I think there’s an opportunity for an expanded relationship, but it’s going to have to wait a little while. Until the transaction closes in [next year’s first quarter], we have to operate as independent companies.”

Carrier Access announced this summer it was reviewing strategic alternatives as it replaced its CEO and corporate development officer, who were husband and wife, amid declining revenue.