Occam in the News
Area firm poised to benefit from FairPoint deal
Citizen.com
January 21, 2008
A Belmont company stands to be a major beneficiary of the proposed acquisition by FairPoint Communications of Verizon's landline business in New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine.
Once the acquisition is closed, Charlotte, N.C.-based FairPoint plans a major broadband upgrade and on Thursday it named Occam Networks Inc. of Santa Barbara, Calif., as the lead access equipment provider.
A key equipment supplier of Occam's is Wilcom Inc., which has been manufacturing telephone line test equipment and transmission products in New England since 1967, and is located at 73 Daniel Webster Highway.
"The FairPoint selection committee combined with an independent engineering firm to conduct a thorough evaluation of the leading access equipment providers," said Peter Nixon, president of FairPoint.
"Occam was selected based on superior product features, their unique capability to handle the scale of our project and the strong track record they have compiled with our FairPoint properties over the years. We've made firm commitments to expand broadband to the residents of Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire, and we are confident our partnership with Occam will equal success."
Defined as a multiphase upgrade project, the first phase will include building 10 Gig redundant Ethernet rings to over 200 Central Offices throughout the three-state region. Phase two will add more than 50,000 digital subscriber lines (DSL) to rural areas that previously did not have broadband service.
"The Occam equipment positions FairPoint to deliver high-speed broadband services over both copper and fiber to residential and business subscribers," said Michael Brown, vice president of access networks at FairPoint. "We wanted an end-to-end IP Network using the best-in-class equipment and Occam outperformed all other vendors."
"FairPoint's challenge and commitment to deliver superior broadband and Ethernet services to Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire is shared by all of us at Occam," said Nathan Harrell, Occam's vice president of worldwide sales. "We can deliver the products and services that FairPoint requires, while building a 21st century infrastructure on Ethernet."
The proposed acquisition has received regulatory approval from the Federal Communications Commission and is awaiting formal approval from the Maine Public Utilities Commission. The Public Service Board in Vermont and the Public Utilities Commission in New Hampshire have yet to rule on the transaction.