July 12, 2010The broadband stimulus program has certainly stimulated the bottom line of FTTH gear supplier Calix. The company recently announced that it had topped the $100 million mark in terms of broadband stimulus programs in which it's involved (see "Calix touts $100M in broadband stimulus customers with XIT Rural Telephone Cooperative contract"). But that hasn't made stimulus-enabled projects its entire focus. Geoff Burke, senior director of corporate marketing at Calix, says the size of his company's opportunities with Tier 2 and 3 carriers who haven't received stimulus funds depends on how decision makers answer three questions.
With AT&T and Verizon shifting into a lower gear when it comes to FTTH/FTTN deployments, the Tier 2 and 3 market becomes the main opportunity for vendors in the space. So far, these smaller players have dominated the broadband stimulus awards. But with the stimulus funding scheduled to be apportioned by this September, the question becomes what happens to the market next. Therefore, the behavior of carriers who either failed to acquire stimulus money or chose not to pursue it will have a significant effect on the demand for FTTH technology over the next several years.
Burke says that executives at such Tier 2 and 3 players are weighing three main issues:
Burke says that some executives don't believe they have enough visibility to answer these questions, and are therefore delaying buildouts -- or making building decisions at all. However, he also indicated that several projects are moving forward. While he declined to put any numbers on the size of the opportunity or how successful Calix has been in taking advantage of it, my take was that a significant amount of FTTH activity is taking place outside of the stimulus halo.
