Accelerated Networks’ New Concept Provides Access to Awards

Suresh Nihalani knew the gamble he was taking in 1996, when he founded Moorpark-based Accelerated Networks.

Nihalani faced not only the usual entrepreneurial challenges of having enough time and money to build a profitable business, but also the challenge of introducing a new concept into the highly competitive telecommunications industry.

Having observed the increased use of computers and the Internet, Nihalani decided to create a network access system that would allow service providers to offer multiple voice and data services over a single line, rather than the usual multiple line system.

“Now, everybody in business wants more and more services,” said Nihalani, who co-founded ACT Networks of Camarillo before his involvement with Accelerated Networks. “You should be able to deliver a bundle of services on a single line rather than install a new line every time you want new services. In a competitive environment, you can’t afford to provide separate lines for services.”

Two years after he started the company and successfully put the concept to work in the form of a Multi-Service Access Platform, Accelerated Networks was presented with the Best of Show award at the Data Communications and LANTimes NetWorld+Interop show in Atlanta late last month.

The show, held each year in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Asia, provides a forum for telecommunications product manufacturers and buyers. Besides winning the contest’s top award, Accelerated Networks earned a Best of Show honor in the WAN (Wide Access Network) and Remote-Access Equipment category.

Accelerated Networks’ multi-service access platform was selected from seven category winners as the overall “Best of the Best.” Lee Keough, editor in chief of Data Communications magazine, said the Ventura County firm’s platform stood out because of its visionary approach to the transmission of information.

“The product was very emblematic of a major trend that is happening out there,” Keough said. “It will give people a greater freedom to choose a lot more network services. It’s a product that is sold to the carriers, the people who sell local service. It will allow them to provide multiple services on a single line and make it easier for customers to decide how to carve up that capability.”

As an example, she said, with multiple services on a single line, corporations could have the flexibility to transmit data at night and during the day use the same lines to transmit a combination of voice, data and video.

Keough said other companies provide access platforms with similar concepts, but none is as encompassing. But, she said, other companies likely will follow Accelerated Networks’ lead.

“I think in the next year you will see more of these products come out,” she said. “This is indicative of what is happening with service providers. With telecom reform and the explosion of data, the public network is being re-architected. A lot of venture capital is being focused on technological advancement.”

Nihalani said his approach of bundling multiple services on a single line has been validated in recent months with the announcement of similar plans by the Sprint, AT&T; and WorldCom carrier companies.

“When we started this two years ago, we went out on a limb, with a gut feeling,” he said. “Now the market we are going after is an emerging market. It will take off in 1999.”

Aside from streamlining communication and making the process more cost-effective, the Multi-Service Access Platform addresses the public desire for increased speed of transmission of information.

“When PCs hit our desks, everybody said OK, now I need a faster PC--so we went from 386, to 486, to 586,” Nihalani said.

“Then we realized that wasn’t good enough,” he said. “We needed a lot more memory. Now everybody is realizing most of the time we want to get on the Net, with most of our transactions, like graphics and audio clips, people are getting frustrated with the long [transmission time]. The next frontier is how are we going to get that access faster. I believe speed is addictive. Once we get something four times faster, nobody wants to go backward.”