Symmetricon inks deal with equipment distributor

Symmetricom has a national distributor for its ADSL loop extender technology, Graybar, which has placed stocking orders for its Taunton, N.J., Stafford, Texas and Fresno, Calif., warehouses.

Symmetricom claims its technology--consists of strategically placed repeaters--doubles the average ADSL range to almost 30,000 feet from a central office, carries up to 1.5 Mbps downstream and 256 Kbps upstream throughout the coverage area, and improves quality of service across the entire network. The product costs $500 to $700 per installed circuit.

“It’s our first product in a new area for us,” said Barry Dropping, Symmetricom’s engineering director, during an interview yesterday at Spring ISPCon in Baltimore. “It gets us into a new space.”

While traditional telephone operators are looking at the technology as a way to extend their ADSL networks, “that’s a much longer prove-out process,” Dropping said. Meanwhile, “independent operating telephone companies go much faster” and “CLECs are pulling on us hard,” he said.

Both want to extend the reach of their DSL offerings to compete with cable operators, primarily for residential users in smaller markets, he said.

“The technology is being accepted at a faster rate than we thought it would,” he said.

Graybar will sell products, including the housings and shelves into which the gear is place, to independent phone companies, Dropping said.