Westell allies with Adtran

Westell Technologies and Adtran plan to announce this week at Supercomm that Westell has developed modules for Adtran's Total Access platform and will OEM and market the product under the Westell name.

Westell's participation is part of Adtran's Total Access Partners Program, a multivendor effort that Adtran also plans to unveil at Supercomm. Total Access is an integrated platform for a central office or remote hub that can accommodate modules for fiber, high bit-rate digital subscriber line and T-1 connections in a single shelf (Telephony, June 1, page 72).

Despite the perceived cooperative effort, however, the two vendors' opinions of their respective developmental roles differ somewhat. Westell executives said the Total Access platform was developed as a collaborative effort, with Westell contributing plug-in cards containing network performance monitoring capabilities.

"Some of the concepts within Total Access came out of our joint work together," said J. Nelson, president and chief operating officer of Westell. "I define the system as including the set of cards that go into it. If you don't have the personality modules, you don't have a system."

Adtran downplayed Westell's role and positioned the partner program as an opportunity for other vendors to create modules that can be plugged into its core product.

"We've had conversations with other vendors-and Westell was the first-about incorporating their plug-ins into the Total Access shelf," said Tom Stanton, vice president of telco marketing at Adtran. "If they want to build a card for our shelf, they tell us what hook we need to put in the shelf to accommodate that."

Stanton confirmed that the agreement allows Westell to OEM the shelf and market Total Access using its own name.

Hekimian Laboratories also is developing equipment compatible with Total Access that can provide the system with both test and performance management capabilities.

"We're able to pull performance information out of the Total Access unit, and we're working toward a test unit that will sit alongside the Total Access platform," said Bill Duncan, senior director of marketing at Hekimian.