Cox Recommits Its TDM Telephony Business to ARRIS;
Contract Value Estimated at $500 Million Over 5 Years
Thursday November 7, 11:07 am ET
DULUTH, Ga., Nov. 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ARRIS (Nasdaq: ARRS - News) announced today that Cox Communications has renewed a contract with ARRIS for its national cable telephony business that will see the two companies working together for the next five years. The new contract continues the ARRIS exclusivity in all existing Cox local telephony markets, and grants exclusivity for its Touchstone(TM) Telephony Port, an environmentally rugged Embedded Multimedia Terminal Adapter (E-MTA), for all future outdoor deployments. The total contract is worth approximately $500 million over the next 5 years.
Also part of the new contract are favorable terms that allow Cox to continue to upgrade all of its Host Digital Terminals (HDT) to the latest software release. The latest software upgrade includes new tools to monitor and report on the robustness of the HFC network. "ARRIS continues to steadily improve the Cornerstone® Voice product to help us ensure premium quality and reliability of service," said Cox Vice President of Telephony Engineering Albert Young, in announcing the contract. "We are pleased with the continuous improvement in the product and ARRIS' sensitivity to our operational and business needs."
Cox has also expanded the scope of its contract with ARRIS to include the use of the ARRIS Touchstone Telephony Port as the exclusive PacketCable(TM) Embedded Multimedia Terminal Adapter (E-MTA) for all outdoor VoIP deployments.
The Touchstone Telephony Port builds on five generations of Cornerstone experience in cable telephony and line card technology, as well as the DOCSIS(TM) 1.1, Euro-DOCSIS and PacketCable specifications. It delivers both voice and data over IP via HFC with reliability and cost efficiency.
"We expect the Touchstone Telephony Port to provide us the same high performance and reliability in IP applications that we have experienced with the Cornerstone Voice Port(TM) for outdoor, network powered applications," added Young. "We look forward to continuing our existing relationship with ARRIS and growing our HFC telephony business with ARRIS TDM and VoIP technology."
"We're delighted to once again be selected as Cox' vendor of record for their cable telephony business," said ARRIS Broadband President Jim Lakin on announcing the contract. "Cox has enjoyed great success gaining new customers through its Circuit Switched cable telephony business, and we're looking forward to helping them grow that business as they implement their transition to IP telephony."
The Company also noted that management would present an overview of ARRIS to analysts and portfolio managers at the UBS Warburg Seventh Annual Global Telecom Conference in New York City, New York, on Wednesday, November 13, at 11:50 a.m. to 12:20 p.m. EST. Access to the audio webcast can be reached at the UBS Warburg homepage at www.ubswarburg.com and by clicking on Events and Conferences in the lower right hand corner. Follow the link for webcast under the Global Telecom Conference heading.
About Cornerstone®
The Cornerstone family delivers a wide range of premium quality HFC data and voice services and provides a platform for converged broadband services. More than 600 customers worldwide deploy Cornerstone high-speed data solutions. ARRIS has over 2,900,000 working lines of Cornerstone telephony currently deployed with more than 56 operators globally. With capacity for over 12.8 million telephony and data lines already shipped, ARRIS is the clear leader in broadband local access.
About Touchstone(TM)
The Touchstone multimedia terminal adapter (MTA) family delivers a wide range of highly reliable, carrier-grade indoor and outdoor voice enabled embedded MTA devices, which are designed to operate with any DOCSIS 1.1 qualified CMTS. When combined with a complete DOCSIS/Euro-DOCSIS-based carrier-grade CMTS/edge router solution, such as the DOCSIS 1.1 qualified Cadant® C4(TM) CMTS or Cornerstone CMTS 1500, the Touchstone family provides the customer premises NIU portion of an end-to-end high-speed data and Telephony over IP (ToIP(TM)) solution provided by ARRIS.
About ARRIS
ARRIS provides broadband local access networks with innovative optical transport, high-speed data and telephony systems for the delivery of voice, video and data to the home and business. ARRIS complete solutions enhance the reliability and value of converged services from the network to the subscriber. Headquartered in Duluth, Georgia, USA, ARRIS has design, engineering, manufacturing, distribution, service and sales office locations throughout the world. Information about ARRIS products and services can be found at www.arrisi.com . |
