Valley Telephone Cooperative stimulus project could dramatically expand customer base but won’t require additional personnel

Valley Telephone Cooperative, based in rural Texas, won broadband stimulus funding that could potentially double its customer base. But the company does not expect to need to hire any additional staff—an achievement that Bill Keever, territory sales manager for Adtran, attributes to the telco’s plan to use Adtran’s Advanced Operational Environment (AOE) to support the rollout.

“This telco is doubling the size of the company with this [rollout],” said Keever. “But they are not going to add significant incremental headcount.”

Valley Telephone won funding to build a fiber-to-the-premises network capable of bringing triple play and Ethernet services to more than 9,000 customers spread over a large geographic area in central Texas. The company announced today that it plans to use equipment from Adtran to support that rollout, including Adtran’s Total Access 5000 platform and the AOE.

The AOE supports what Kevin Morgan, director of product marketing for Adtran’s carrier networks unit, called “simplified services management.” Using the AOE, he said, Valley Telephone customer service representatives will be able to turn up customers for video services, for example, using a five-step click, drag and drop process.

“When you compare that to what used to happen, it was laborious and [personnel] had to know about each piece of equipment along the way including the access equipment, the set-top box and the head-end,” explained Morgan. “In the AOE, we remove some of the burdens of the CSR having to know each piece of equipment.”

The AOE capability, Morgan said, is built into various devices that will underlie Valley Telephone’s FTTP network. “The intelligence to turn up service is taken care of in the background in templates,” said Morgan.

Project will primarily use Active Ethernet
Valley Telephone previously deployed FTTP in its ILEC territory—but unlike many stimulus winners, the company did not stick with its existing vendor in making equipment choices for its stimulus project. Previously the company used equipment from Enablence (CP: Enablence revs fiber platform, on the hunt for deals). But this time around Valley Telephone opted for the Adtran platform—a move that was prompted in part by uncertainties surrounding the future of Enablence’s systems business since Enablence indicated earlier this year that it planned to divest that business. That business was recently sold to Aurora Networks.

Valley Telephone also changed its technology approach. While the FTTP network in its ILEC territory was primarily based on GPON, the company plans to rely primarily on active Ethernet for its stimulus project.