As an early player in VDSL technology, Warwick Valley Telephone Co. learned important lessons about its application and limitations. This week, the company said it has deployed Pannaway Technologies Service Convergence Network IP access platform for its next generation of services delivered over fiber.

WVTC is an independent local exchange carrier based in Warwick, N.Y. It also serves the areas of Vernon and Greenwood Lake in New Jersey. The company’s competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) business in New Jersey is over-building fiber-to-the-home to deliver voice, video and data services, competing in parts of Sprint’s (Embarq’s) territory.

“Competition is driving the demand to deliver more than the early technologies like VDSL,” said Keith Scarzafava, director of network technology at WVTC.

He said short loop-lengths, limited bandwidth, limited interoperability and extremely limited control of its "look and feel" drove WVTC to move forward with fiber to the home.

“As a small company, if you’re going up against the big guys--which we are--being the same is not good enough; you have to leapfrog them,” Scarzafava said.

WVTC has deployed Pannaway’s Active Ethernet fiber-to-the-premise and ADSL2+ technologies in its CLEC territory. It is using this technology and Pannaway’s SCN to bring traditional telephony, voice-over-IP, high-speed data and HDTV to approximately 20,000 additional subscribers in surrounding areas.

“At this time we want to roll it out in Jersey, polish it and get it going there, then decide where we will take it next, which probably will be in our ILEC,” Scarzafava said.

He added that the second time around on building its video infrastructure, a standards-based approach was a big factor in the vendor selection process. “This way we get to make the choice on whose set-top box we will use and whose middleware and how I want the [service] to appear to the customer,” Scarzafava said.

The SCN from Pannaway consists of its Broadband Aggregation Routers, which are used to deliver Gigabit Ethernet-based transport and can scale to 10 Gb/s; the Broadband Access Switch supporting both ADSL2+ and Active Ethernet; and its Residential Gateway NIDs.   

WVTC also is using Pannaway’s BAM for the deployment, provisioning and ongoing management of its new IP and Ethernet-based broadband equipment and services. Pannaway also has sold its SCN solutions Cross Telephone of Oklahoma, Allendale Communications of Michigan, Empire Telephone of New York, Bruce Municipal of Ottawa, Canada; KPU of Ketchikan, Alaska, and others.