Industry veteran Lonnie Martin, a longtime ADC Telecommunications executive who also helped found White Rock, has stepped in to lead Aktino, an Ethernet-over-copper company hoping to capitalize on the current boom. The new president and CEO talked with Telephony Editor-in-Chief Carol Wilson about his decision.

On why Aktino: The guys who founded this company [Ben Itri, Michail Tsatsanis and Sam Salib] were the founders of PairGain. I was the first one to try to buy PairGain when I was at ADC, although it didn't wind up happening until after I left. They seem to have done it again in terms of some really interesting technology, which is fundamentally different than what's in the market. Everyone else is all about G.SHDSL, and Aktino is doing [discrete multitone] and [multiple input/multiple output].

On Aktino's opportunities: There are three key applications. Everyone is talking about cell site backhaul, and that's one. Obviously, delivering high-speed Ethernet symmetrically to businesses a lot sooner than fiber is another. We also see upspeeding DSLAMs as another.

On “upspeeding” the DSLAM: Telcos have all these DSLAMs out there delivering DSL service, and a lot of them are connected back to the [central office] over copper wires. When you use our technology asymmetrically — much higher downstream than upstream, which we can uniquely do, and G.SHDSL can't — then we can install [at the central office] and drive a lot more bandwidth out to their customers.