CenturyTel to make ADSL2 Plus push

CenturyTel will make an aggressive move into ADSL2 Plus in the fourth quarter, in part helped by the coming general availability of Calix’s ADSL2 Plus line cards next week.

CenturyTel has been among the early trial customers for Calix, using its LaCrosse, Wis., video as one of the test locations. The carrier has used Calix for some time and is standardizing on the C7 broadband loop carrier as one of its access platforms.

"It has the architecture in place to migrate to next generation services that we have in mind with incremental investment," said Tim Walden, vice president of engineering for CenturyTel.

However, the carrier, which is among the most sought-after access customers, has been careful not to wrap itself up with a single access vendor or any specific public plans to roll out video service. With Calix, for instance, Walden said the company is contemplating a number of high bandwidth services including virtual private networks and high-speed data.

The move comes in large part because ADSL2 Plus allows carriers to push higher speeds. Walden said the carrier has been getting speeds of 15 Mb/s on loops up 9000 feet. CenturyTel, while one of the larger independents, serves large rural areas. About 75% of its customers sit on loops that are less than 18,000 feet.

"It’s a natural technology migration. We have a large deployment of ADSL but ADSL 2 Plus is driving more robust bandwidth over distance."

Just as important, the economics of deploying ADSL2 Plus have improved to the point that by the end of the year, CenturyTel likely will only deploy the newer technology.

"The economics associated with ADSL 2 Plus are better than ADSL," he said. "Given that there are no issues that come out of the trial, my intention is that by the fourth quarter we’re rolling forward very heavily with ADSL 2 Plus."

Likewise, Calix is seeing significant price drops in ADSL2 Plus chip sets to the point that producing "traditional" ADSL cards might not even make sense.

"In a quarter or so I would expect that 100% of the ADSL ports going out the door will be 2 Plus," said Kevin Walsh, vice president of marketing for Calix.