Kick starting DSL: AFC, Centillium team up to provide plug-in card

With limited power, tight spaces and high temperatures in digital loop carriers, digital subscriber line has been off to a slow start. A new plug-in card from Advanced Fiber Communications intends to give the rollout a little nudge.

AFC recently chose Centillium Technology Corp. to supply its CopperLite chipset for the G.Lite asymmetrical DSL plug-in card for AFC's UMC 1000 multiservice access platform. The Centillium chipset reportedly supports the industry's highest port density of up to eight DSL ports per chipset, which enables AFC to provide more DSL lines and use less rack space in a small DLC.

"Phone companies have been slow with their ADSL rollouts because it is difficult to fit into their existing infrastructure," said Faraj Aalaei, Centillium's vice president of planning and business development. "They haven't been able to do so because of power usage and high density. The CopperLite chipsets offer eight G.Lite DSL ports on two chips." Service providers can deploy high-density line cards in the existing frames without losing any copper pairs.

"The UMC 1000's current ADSL service card is the first to offer POTS and ADSL on the same card," said Ryan Koontz, business development manager for AFC. The UMC is neither a traditional next generation DLC nor a DSL access multiplexer, he said. "It enables multiservice access from a single chassis, including POTS, narrowband and broadband services."

According to sources at AFC, the chipset has the industry's lowest power consumption-0.65 W per port. They also said that by lowering power consumption and temperatures while saving space, they could bring down a few of the last barriers to DSL deployment.

"Making DSL easier to incorporate is exactly what the industry needs to have mass deployment," said Laurie Falconer, a DSL analyst for TeleChoice. "This is just what they need to kick start the residential market."