Teradyne to Chair DSL Provisioning Panel at DSL World Forum

DEERFIELD, Ill.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 21, 2002--

Teradyne, Inc. (NYSE: TER) Broadband Test Division is chairing a panel entitled Flow-Through Provisioning and Dynamic Service Selection at the DSL World Forum being held in Berlin, October 28-31, 2002. The panel includes representatives of BT, Siemens and Teradyne presenting field data showing their experiences with mass deployment of broadband services. The speakers will present results showing their experiences in pre-qualification of lines for broadband services, identifying the speed that each line can support and automatically updating the line record database. The panel includes a discussion of optimizing network resource utilization to support voice, video and data services. There will also be field data presented on the means to reliably verify end-to-end services at the call center. The presentation will be held at 11:00am on Wednesday October 30 at the DSL World Forum in Berlin.

"Early DSL deployments are successful and valuable lessons have been learned. Service providers have an array of alternative solutions, but they want to know best practices for which solutions work in large scale deployments," says Les Hines, Teradyne sales director, who will be chairing the panel. "There is a great deal of field experience with DSL pre-qualification, flow through provisioning and operational efficiency improvement. This is an opportunity for people to understand what has worked effectively and interact directly with the people who have implemented these process improvements."

Among the presentation will be field data on Teradyne's Celerity and NetFlare systems. Celerity pre-qualifies copper loops for DSL service and is currently testing over 25 million lines in Europe and North America. Testing via the existing switch test bus, the system can provide a compelling economic case by finding new loops that can support DSL which are currently categorized as unable to support DSL by current records systems. Field trials have indicated that Celerity can identify up to 15% more total qualified lines. Celerity can also significantly improve the DSL provisioning process by reducing the manual engineering that often accompanies the qualification and provisioning of a new DSL line. Celerity's test results are targeted at augmenting length-based records systems.

"Once broadband services are in place, service providers want to reduce their operational costs of maintaining these services while satisfying the subscribers," says Michael Pula, Director of Marketing for Teradyne's NetFlare system. "NetFlare gives the call center technician the information that is needed to resolve a subscriber's service problem correctly the first time."

Mr. Pula will present NetFlare field results showing substantial reductions in Average Call Handling Time for performance and connectivity calls. These types of calls take significant time on line with subscribers and can average six minutes longer than other calls. Instead of requiring the Customer Service Representative (CSR) to window back and forth through an array of tools looking for data provided by monitoring systems, NetFlare's active diagnostic system provides the CSR with an integrated view to observe the service as the subscriber experiences it. This active diagnosis quickly identifies the jurisdiction, nature and location of a service problem while the subscriber is on line. With this information, the CSR can correctly set service expectations with the subscriber and satisfy their needs at the first touch. Field trials have demonstrated that NetFlare can significantly reduce average call handling time, reduce escalations to Tier 2 support groups, reduce repeat calls, and increase consumer satisfaction with their overall service.

About Teradyne Broadband Test Division

Teradyne Broadband Test Division is a division of Teradyne, Inc (NYSE: TER). The group develops state-of-the-art-testing capabilities that support cable operators' goals to sell and deploy more broadband services sooner and improve the efficiency of provisioning and customer care for high-speed data networks. Teradyne's 10 years of internet protocol testing experience and industry leading background in layer 1 testing enhances its 30 years experience in providing test systems that support customer care for approximately 120 Million voice lines worldwide. Teradyne is the world's largest supplier of automatic test equipment for a variety of applications with sales of $1.4 billion in 2001 and currently employs about 8000 people worldwide. For more information on Teradyne's Broadband Test Products, visit Teradyne at: http://www.teradyne.com/prods/btd/.

“NetFlare gives the call center technician the information that is needed to resolve a subscriber's service problem correctly the first time.”