The CEO Connection

It's not often that telecommunications manufacturers and service providers get the chance to affect the lives of individuals directly, but at this moment in history we have that opportunity. Through the new services that our equipment enables we can help start a cycle of growth and improvement for communities across our nation and around the globe.

Clearly jobs are the key to enabling growth. But just as important as jobs are for community revitalization, attracting highly qualified professionals to fill these jobs is equally as important. By attracting these people, communities can start a self-sustaining cycle that will lead to improvements in infrastructure, education, goods and services, and businesses.

And, the time has never been better. Members of today's workforce have unprecedented freedom and flexibility to choose where they live, and many are choosing the smaller towns whose telecommunications needs are served by you. However, to exercise their geographic freedom these professionals must have access to the advanced communications services that keep them connected to the world, their jobs, their partners and their friends.

When new workers move to a community new businesses spring up to provide them with the goods and services they want. The cycle continues. With a larger tax base, communities can build new infrastructure, fund new schools and community facilities and begin to attract even more industry. And, as a service provider you play an important role by providing communities with the kinds of advanced broadband telecommunications services they need now and into the future.

On September 5-7 Occam will hold its annual Users Group Conference, an event that provides us with an excellent opportunity to continue our conversation on how we can work together to support growth and/or enhancement of the quality of life in your communities. I encourage you to attend. Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Bob Howard-Anderson
President and CEO, Occam Networks

Thursday Webinars
Check here for up-to-date information on the latest Occam webinar.

For those of us in living in populous areas such as central California the thought of a dwindling population seems foreign. Yet, many areas across the United States are seeing just that. The changing economics of small- to medium-sized cities is forcing people to leave in search of good jobs. If you are located in one of these areas, or if you are interested in attracting high-revenue businesses and higher paying jobs to your area, you won't want to miss our July webinar, Growing Your Community through Advanced Broadband Services.

Join Juan Vela, Director of Strategic Technologies and Markets, at 10:00 am PST/ 1:00 pm EST on July 26 as he shows you how you can leverage advanced broadband services to enrich and grow your community. Click here for more information. Click here to register.

Stay up to date with the latest information! If you have missed any of our previous webinars, such as last month's BLC 6450 and RTC 4033: An Overview, you can now view it and any of our other informative webinars at your leisure by clicking here.

ONUG: User Group Conference Online Registration is Now Open!

Online registration for the 3rd Annual Occam Network Users Group Conference on September 5-7, 2007 in Hilton Head, South Carolina is now open and registration is just a click away. We encourage you to register early for this important and fun event.

Occam Networks will kickoff this year's conference on Wednesday, September 5th, with two beneficial technical training workshops followed by a delicious lunch. The afternoon will include discussions on industry news and trends, followed by Occam product roadmaps and standards updates. Afterwards, customers and their guests will enjoy more networking during a sunset low-country seafood reception and dinner on the beach, complete with awe-inspiring views, casual beach music and delicious food.

Hilton Head is a premiere vacation destination, and flights into and out of the island fill up quickly, so we encourage you to make your travel plans well in advance of the conference.

The conference is being held at the Westin Resort located in Port Royal Plantation. With two pools, three championship golf courses, sixteen tennis courts, and other activities such as kayaking, deep-sea fishing, and horseback riding are also available there's plenty of fun to be had! Named to Conde Nast Traveler's 2002 Gold List, the resort provides the utmost in southern hospitality.

For questions, please contact your sales representative or Kirsten McGregor at 805.692.2917 or kmcgregor@occamnetworks.com.

Don't miss out, register early!

Occam Moves to New 'Green' Facility

On July 13 Occam moved to its new headquarters, a two level LEED-certified building located at 6868 Cortona Drive in Santa Barbara. The LEED green building rating system, which was developed and administered by the U.S. Green Building Council, promotes design and construction practices that increase profitability while reducing the negative environmental impacts of buildings and improving occupant health and well-being. The new building has been outfitted with a variety of environmentally friendly features that save on fuel consumption, generate fewer emissions and reduce environmental disruption.

"We are committed to being good corporate citizens, and we can't think of a better way to do it" said Bob Howard-Anderson. "It's a win-win for everyone."

The new, 47 thousand square foot corporate headquarters provides the company with more than three times the square footage of its former building and boasts four massive labs, a state-of-the-art training facility and demo room and ample room to accommodate the company's robust growth.

We hope you will stop by for a visit soon!

NXTCOMM 07 Highlights
Occam hits a home run!

Occam recently exhibited at the industry's largest telecommunications trade event, NXTCOMM. Always a watershed event for Occam and the industry, this year's NXTCOMM was no exception. The company kicked off the show with a stellar pre-show event at US Cellular Field with 65 customers and Occam personnel in attendance. The ‘White Sox Gang' watched the Chicago White Sox defeat the Florida Marlins from the comfort of three Diamond Suites, where they were treated to drinks and dinner during an exciting example of America's Favorite Pastime.

Occam debuted a new, larger booth complete with a second floor at this year's event. That extra space was put to good use as Occam welcomed more visitors than ever. Show personnel were kept busy demonstrating products, answering questions and meeting with customers, prospects and partners. Visitors were keen to get a look at the new BLC 6450, ONT 2343 and RTC 4033. And, the RTC 4011 and AFC cabinet retrofit drew lots of interest from telcos wishing to upgrade their outside plant.

During the show booth visitors had the opportunity to enter our raffle to win one of several exciting prizes. Participants were entered in the drawing for the Grand Prize: a 40” Samsung Flatscreen HDTV. Our lucky Grand Prize winner was Tuedis Quesada, Vice President of Wireline Engineering, at Tricom of the Dominican Republic!

Congratulations Tuedis!

Bob Howard-Anderson Named Ernst & Young California Entrepreneur of the Year 2007 Finalist

On June 26th, Occam President and CEO, Bob Howard-Anderson, was honored at the black tie Ernst & Young California Entrepreneur of the Year awards ceremony held at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles. Bob was chosen as a finalist from a group of nearly 500 candidates from all over California. The 22 finalists represented a variety of California industries including technology, real estate, retail, financial, and others. Bob was accompanied by his wife and daughter and members of the Occam executive team.

Joining the Leading Edge
New telco leaders join the Leading Edge.

Prairie Grove Telephone Company, the largest family-owned and operated telephone company in the state of Arkansas, has just selected Occam to upgrade its network to Active Ethernet. Prairie Grove serves approximately 10,000 subscribers, providing voice and broadband data products today with plans to offer video in the future. The telco will deploy a combination of Occam Fiber, DSL and T1 CES blades, on a 10 Gigabit Ethernet backbone network that will feed 55 wire centers. Its five year goal is to bring ultra high bandwidth to 100 percent of its customer base to supply any and all of the services its subscribers may need or want in the future.

Centennial de Puerto Rico, the second largest telecommunications service provider in the commonwealth, recently selected the Occam Broadband Loop Carrier (BLC) system to expand its fiber-to-the-business (FTTB) Ethernet solution. The BLC solution included Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) voice functionality.

According to Occam Vice President of Sales, Nathan Harrell, "SIP is rapidly becoming the VoIP control protocol of choice due to the wide variety of traditional and value-add features and services it enables telcos to offer. SIP reflects Occam's ongoing value of delivering advanced solutions to our telco customers to help them expand their product offerings and revenue opportunities."

Centennial is Occam Networks' first customer in the Caribbean region and its first SIP-based business-services-only customer. The CLEC maintains an extensive fiber layout and is deploying a metro Ethernet solution to its business customer base for VoIP and data, including private VLANs for E-LAN services.

Customer Snapshot: Bledsoe Telephone Cooperative Update

More than three years ago, Greg Anderson, General Manager of Bledsoe Telephone Cooperative, committed to building a single IP-based network that could deliver voice, data and video services over a hybrid copper/fiber network. Today, he is much closer to delivering on that commitment after recently going live with a major network upgrade that uses the Occam BLC 6000 platform.

Bledsoe is in the process of upgrading approximately 50 new sites, including five central offices, with a goal of shortening its local loops to 10 thousand feet. When all phases of the project are complete, the cooperative will have added approximately 120 new pole-mounted cabinets, giving its entire subscriber base easy access to advanced voice, data and video services.

Greg Anderson, general manager of Bledsoe Telephone stated, "The Occam BLC platform rose above the pack during our testing phase and has proven to be an excellent choice for our upgrade. The company has given us outstanding support to ensure that the deployment has gone smoothly, on time and on budget."

Bledsoe expects the BLC-based network to enable the Tennessee-based telco to increase the number of new, revenue generating services it can offer its subscribers, as well as provide it with substantial cost savings.

A key component of Bledsoe's network upgrade has been the US Department of Agriculture, Rural Development, Utilities Programs, Telecommunications (RUS) who financed this significant network revamp. According Terry Kokinda, General Field Representative – Tennessee for RUS, "The network upgrade just completed by Bledsoe demonstrates how public/private partnerships can positively impact community services. The RUS program continues to provide support to communities such as Pikeville and we are eager to expand the program to include more areas where our funding can make a difference in the quality of local telecommunications services."

The Power of Partnership
CopperCom-Occam joint seminar & successful Nortel compatibility testing.

Occam and CopperCom
In August CopperCom and Occam Networks will be present a second series of marketing seminars, Beyond Voice and Data: Adding Value & Revenue with APPLICATIONS. Specifically tailored to General Managers, Sales and Marketing Managers, Customer Service Managers and Representatives and accountants/finance personnel, the seminar focuses on applications: Applications that can help improve customer retention rates; killer applications that enable Telco's to generate new revenue streams and gain a competitive advantage; and, demonstrations on how Telco's can make money with a new access platform.

The seminars will be presented in these locations on the following dates:

Register today for these valuable free seminars.

Occam and Nortel
The Occam Broadband Loop Carrier (BLC) POTS and Combination POTS/ADSL2Plus blades have successfully completed compatibility laboratory testing with Nortel DMS-10 Packet Gateway Interface product. Occam blades tested for interoperability in the laboratory tests included the BLC 6150, 6151, 6152, 6252, 6244 and 6246. Interoperability testing with Nortel CS 1500 and CS 2000 communications servers is also underway.

"Occam made an extensive investment of time and resources to ensure telco customers that our BLC blades are compatible with Nortel switches," said Russ Sharer, vice president of marketing at Occam Networks. "SIP voice is becoming ever more important in carrier next-generation access deployments and Occam's experience with VoIP is clearly a benefit for our customers." Read more...

Occam in the Caribbean

In June the Caribbean Association of National Telecommunications Association's (CANTO) held its 23rd Annual Conference and Trade Exhibition in Barbados. It was Occam's first time exhibiting at the conference, and we found it a well-attended show with approximately 350 attendees from around the area. As always, interest in Occam products was high with FTTX, DSL and cabinets as the hot topics.

At the event, Juan Vela, Occam Director of Strategic Technologies and Markets, spoke on a panel, Active Ethernet and PON: Determining the Best Architecture for Your Next Generation Network, which included several Caribbean telcos. The event drew a substantial number of participants who engaged the panel in a lively discussion.

All in all, a big success for Occam. We'll see you there next year!

Expert Training at your Fingertips
If you or someone in your organization needs initial or advanced training, sign up for an Occam training class.

Advanced BLC: Two days
July 31-August 1 (Tue-Wed)
Corporate Office, Santa Barbara

OccamView and BLC Troubleshooting
August 2 (Thu)
Corporate Office, Santa Barbara

IP/Video Technologies
September 24 (Mon)
Corporate Office, Santa Barbara

BLC 6000 Installation and Operation: Four days
September 25 -28 (Tue-Fri)
Corporate Office, Santa Barbara

Advanced BLC: Two Days
October 16-17 (Tue-Wed)
Corporate Office, Santa Barbara

OccamView and BLC Troubleshooting
October 18 (Thu)
Corporate Office, Santa Barbara

Please visit our Occam Training web page for class descriptions and on-line signup or call 805-692-3569 for more information.