Occam beats the heat in Louisiana and wins Kaplan Telephone deal

The ones that can take the most heat usually win out. That’s apparently the case with Occam Networks, as Kaplan Telephone Company (KTC), an independent phone company in south central Louisiana, is deploying the company's broadband loop carrier system.

The system will be used to deliver DSL to rural business and residential customers in KTC’s territory. The phone company just completed a two-month trial of numerous broadband loop systems.

“It’s cheap and it works,” said Carl Turnley, vice president of the family-owned KTC. “Our main concern was the heat and the Occam equipment worked great. It took the Louisiana heat,” Turnley said. Temperatures often reach well over 100 degrees in KTC's territory.

KTC looked at PairGain’s equipment first, “but didn’t have a good experience with them,” Turnley said. The company then looked at equipment produced by Cisco Systems, which met all of KTC’s requirements but at too high a price, according to Turnley.

KTC is competing with cable operators, so its price point for service must be much lower for the carrier to be profitable. The company expects the payoff to be within 12 months for the Occam equipment whereas it would have been much longer for the Cisco equipment, Turnley said.