The National Exchange Carrier Association (NECA) has released the second edition of its “Trends 2007: Building Tomorrow's Network” report.
The report shows how NECA member companies in rural America are evolving their networks to support high-speed Internet transmission and delivery of video content.
Currently, there are 1054 members of NECA's traffic sensitive pool providing more than 1 million DSL lines, a substantial increase from the 814 companies providing DSL in 2003. In 1999, there were only 151 members providing a total of 20,000 DSL lines.
The progress being made by rural telecommunications companies goes far beyond the ability to provide DSL to their customers. NECA member companies are increasing their use of fiber so they can offer more bandwidth and extend the reach of their networks. They are migrating to packet switching using network routers and softswitches and deploying their networks using packet transmission based on ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode), IP and Ethernet technology.
According to the NECA member report, 681 companies report using ATM technology, 477 use Ethernet technology, 318 use broadband wireless technology, 254 use cable modem service to support Internet and video services, and 233 companies have fiber in the loop. The report also indicates more than 400 traffic-sensitive pool members are providing video services to their customers, with another 132 planning to deploy IPTV in 2008 or beyond.
For more information, visit: www.neca.org.
