Farmers Telephone Chooses Occam to Deliver MPEG-4-based IPTV

Farmers Telephone Cooperative (FTC), the third-largest telephone cooperative in the U.S., has selected Occam Networks' BLC 6000 System to deliver Triple Play services to its 60,000 subscribers in eastern South Carolina. The video portion of the network will utilize MPEG-4 Encoding, making it one of the first commercial deployments of MPEG-4 in North America.


FTC is in the process of upgrading its existing access network to a complete Ethernet- and IP-based network that provides its subscribers with services equal to those available to subscribers in urban and suburban areas of the country. It will change from its current TDM switch to a softswitch in late summer of 2005. FTC has recently installed the nation's first all-MPEG-4 AVC digital headend using the Tut Systems Astria Digital TV platform and will use the Occam BLC 6000 System's Gigabit Ethernet transport to deliver a full range of Triple Play services including Digital TV.


FTC currently has approximately 450 AFC remote cabinets installed in its network.


The cooperative already has Occam equipment deployed and expects to install the Occam broadband loop carrier in more than 600 remote sites when the installation is completed, and plans to commercially launch its Digital TV service in the fourth quarter of 2005.
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