Entrisphere today announced that TDS Telecom has signed a multi-year deal to deploy its BLM 1500 multiplexer as part of its soon-to-be-launched triple-play service. TDS will use the BLM 1500 in both passive optical network and copper architectures.

Though neither company is providing financial details, the deal is one of the more significant access contracts in the past few months. The company, which will deploy the multplexer in its incumbent as well as its competitive carrier groups, serves more than one million access lines, mostly in rural areas of the Midwest.

"They're looking forward to what they're going to face in two to three years," said Don McCullough, director of product marketing with Entrisphere.

Like recent announcements from Calix and Amedia, Entrisphere is using an architecture that allows carriers to mix and match fiber line cards with line cards using ADSL2+.

For Entrisphere, the contract is the first word from the company since it signed an alliance with Fujitsu as part of an effort to bid on RBOCs FTTP deals. Though the company has not received a contract from any of the three carriers involved in the joint RFP, Peter Bourne, senior vice president of marketing, said there are plenty of opportunities.

"As with all new service rollouts, there are often several phases of those deployments," Bourne said.