Alaska Telco Delivers DS3 With Aktino Broadband Over Copper Platform

Aktino (Booth 1146) is announcing that Matanuska Telephone Association (MTA), an Alaskan communications cooperative with more than 60,000 access lines, has deployed its AK3000 platform to deliver bandwidth at its wireless cell sites.

With Aktinos AK3000 solution, we are now able to provide highly reliable, high-quality full DS3 and fractional DS3 services to customers who previously were limited to T1 circuits, says Dennis Eby, broadband transmission engineer for MTA. Aktinos platforms provide high-quality broadband services that would have previously required fiber. The savings over trenching fiber, reduced risk of stranded fiber investments, and the instant revenue from being able to rapidly meet exacting customer demands is a tremendous value for our organization.

The major wireless service provider that MTA serves needed a full channelized DS3 at one of its many cell sites in the MTA footprint.

The right solution would be fiber, says Hamid Lalani, senior vice president of marketing and product management. But cell sites are not near where people live or work, so the operator cant make the business case.

Based on standard DSL technology, DMT and MIMO techniques, Aktinos AK3000 for TDM and AK4000 for Ethernet product families allow carriers to deliver business-class broadband services over existing copper loops.

By far, the majority of wireless cell sites are dependent on copper loops for carrying the backhaul traffic. The strong growth of the wireless sector directly creates equivalent growth in backhaul traffic. Given the time and cost to trench fiber, the existing copper access network will continue to play a vital role as the industry evolves to 2.5 and 3G architectures, says Michael Howard, principal analyst at Infonetics Research. Aktinos products fit this market segment, giving their customers the reliability, rate and reach over multiple pairs of embedded copper needed for wireless backhaul.