Verizon’s FTTP orders surprise ADC

Verizon Communications got a jump on fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) deployment this year, according to ADC Telecommunications.

Reporting its first-quarter earnings this week, the vendor said FTTP equipment orders from Verizon picked up earlier than expected, as the carrier worked through its inventory quicker than it did last year.

ADC reported $297 million in revenue for the first quarter, 9% more than a year earlier. Revenue from fiber connectivity, at nearly $80 million for the quarter, was more than 30% higher than UBS Investment Research expected.

However, due to questions surrounding the deployment plans of AT&T and Deutsche Telekom, and because it expects orders from Verizon to slow in the second half of this year, ADC retained its previous expectations of $1.26 billion to $1.29 billion in revenue for 2007.

Verizon and AT&T each accounted for about 15% of ADC’s first-quarter revenue.