AFC launched a marketing and advertising campaign to articulate the company's strategy as a "Pure-Play Access" supplier . The "AFC-The Acronym for Access" campaign touts the company's heritage in voice and broadband solutions and highlights the importance of the access portion of the network as the primary arena for differentiation and competition among carriers. Marketing initiatives include a redesigned web site and advertising. http://www.afc.com
- Earlier this month, AFC agreed to acquire Marconi's North American Access (NAA) business for $240 million in cash. Marconi NAA's major products include a fiber-to-the-curb (FTTC) platform and DLCs. The acquisition would also provide AFC with a greater ability to penetrate major RBOC accounts. Notably, Marconi's fiber-to-the-curb platform is deployed extensively at BellSouth, which has been pursuing a fiber-to-the-curb (FTTC) architecture since 1995. Nearly one million homes have been fiber-passed out of a market of 14 million homes in BellSouth territory. Meanwhile, AFC's fiber-to-the-premise (FTTP) solution was recently selected by Verizon.
