Adtran's Stanton: We'll see carrier G.fast revenues in the first half of 2017

A top Adtran executive confirmed that the provider is currently engaged in over 60 G.fast trials with multiple service providers.

Speaking to investors during the company's first quarter 2016 earnings call, Tom Stanton, CEO and chairman of Adtran, said that the G.fast trials reflect the service provider industry's recognition of pushing higher speeds on existing infrastructure where needed.

"We continue to push our industry lead in G.fast development with now over 60 carriers around the world driving our G.fast infrastructure," Stanton said, according to an earnings transcript. "We believe that we are entering a period of time what the definition of acceptable competitive broadband speeds are changing rapidly."

As Adtran continues through the trials with the expectation of winning customers for its solutions the company forecasts that it could start seeing G.fast revenue next year.

This is because it is dealing with large service providers that have an OS integration cycle of 12-18 months.

"We expect our first G.fast revenue with larger carriers to begin ... in the first half of 2017," Stanton said.  "We may see it a little bit this year but we really expect it to be material in the first half of next year."

While he did not refer to BT (NYSE: BT) by name, Stanton said that Adtran continues to work with the telco and that "it's positioned fairly well" to win because BT has a "very good product set."

Besides G.fast, Adtran is making progress on the 10G PON front, winning a contract with a large U.S. Tier 1 telco. Adtran also said that it is engaged in multiple trials in several key markets utilizing its SDN and controlled architecture.

Similar to the G.fast trials and potential deployments, Adtran also does not expect the Tier 1 telco that purchased 10G PON equipment to start deployment until 2017.

"As you probably know the 10 gig developments that are targeted after the carrier market as well as 10 gig developments that are targeted after the MSO market, but having said that, I really don't have a lot more color to give you until this thing starts to roll (out)," Stanton said. "I know that there are some specific plans for the rollout but they will not happen this year."

For more:
- see the earnings transcript

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