Cable One, a rural market cable operator owned by the Washington Post Co.
, hsa selected Nortelas its primary
Voice over IP (VoIP)technology and professional services
provider.
Phoenix-based Cable One operates 52 cable systems serving 715,000
subscribers in 19 states. It plans to launch VoIP telephony services in up to
45 markets throughout the midwestern, southern and western United States.
Nortel’s VoIP architecture will allow Cable One to consolidate switching
resources to minimize the capital, operating and engineering costs
commonly
associated with rural market network expansion.
In addition to VoIP services, Cable One will use Nortel Global Services for
planning, program management, multi-vendor integration and deployment.
“Nortel has generated significant momentum in the global cable market by
helping cable providers offer new voice, video and data services,” Dan
Mondor, general manager of Nortel’s MSO Solutions, said in a statement.
Mondor said one of Nortel’s key strategies is to integrate products from
companies such as IP Unity and Sigma Systems into the Nortel offering.
Nortel will provide Cable One with IP Unity’s PacketCable-qualified Mereon
6000 Media Server and Mereon Unified Messaging application including voicemail. The company will also use Sigma’s Service Management Platform and VoIP
service package for end-to-end integration of billing solutions, softswitch
operations, voice mail and Cable One’s competitive local exchange carrier
(CLEC) partners.
“Adding VoIP to the Cable One network is a major initiative,” Steve Fox,
vice president for Cable One’s digital services and technology, said in a
statement.
According to Fox, Cable One plans to roll out the cable telephony solution
by January.
Both the IP Unity and Sigma products have gone through systems integration
with Nortel’s Cable VoIP solution to reduce deployment costs.
“IP telephony is a key component of our corporate network strategy, and
implementing these solutions from Nortel allows us to capitalize on prior
investments as we move forward into IP telephony technology,” Fox said.