Home Telephone Co. Tests High-Speed Internet Access With AG Communication Systems' ATIUM GateWay DSL Solution.

ST. JACOB, Ill., Oct. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Home Telephone Co. (HTC) announced today that it would conduct a market trial of digital subscriber line (DSL) services. HTC will evaluate the effectiveness of DSL services to provide high-speed Internet access for its customers in southern Illinois using the ATIUM(R) GateWay platform. AG Communication Systems has successfully deployed DSL services at a number of other independent service providers across the country, including Elkhart (Kansas), Harrisonville (Illinois), Leaco (New Mexico) and Loretto (Tennessee) telephone companies.

"DSL services provide substantial increases in speed compared to standard 56K modems," said Justin Schmidt, plant supervisor of Home Telephone Co. "Users of DSL services can expect to download data at speeds up to 2.5 Mbps and upload at 1.0 Mbps. For example, a file that takes 30 minutes to download with a 56K modem can be downloaded in about 30 seconds with DSL."

"As an added bonus, DSL technology allows a customer to make a telephone call and access the Internet at the same time," said Rachel Watson, marketing manager of Home Telephone Co. "Because voice and data traffic use different frequencies with DSL, only one physical line is needed."

Several computers at the Home Telephone Co. office will be configured with DSL services. HTC customers will be able to arrange a hands-on demonstration of these DSL services by calling the HTC office at (618) 644-2111.

"ATIUM GateWay is really a win-win for both service providers and end users," said Mark Emery, vice president and general manager of the New Ventures Group at AG Communication Systems. "ATIUM GateWay's broadband access solution allows service providers to relieve congestion on their voice network using their existing copper infrastructure. At the same time, end users get the speed they demand for efficient Internet and remote LAN connections."

DSL technology divides the available spectrum on existing copper phone wire between voice and data, with voice on the baseband below 4 Khz and data on the higher broadband spectrum. Using DSL technology, service providers can deliver multimegabit data rates while leaving voice services intact -- on a single physical line. This broadband data network access service moves information at extremely high speeds, increasing productivity by eliminating waits for data transport.

Phoenix-based AG Communication Systems, a subsidiary of Lucent Technologies, is a leading provider of advanced communication products and services, including switching, access, video, wireless and intelligent network products. AG Communication Systems' GTD-5(R) digital switching systems serve more than 17 million business, government, and residential subscribers throughout North America. Annual revenues for the fiscal year ended September 1998 were approximately $450 million. Additional information is available on the company's web site at http://www.agcs.com.

All products and brand names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. GTD-5 is a registered trademark used under license from GTE Corporation.