Comcast Plans Key VoIP Deployment
Jan. 31, 2003
newtelephony.com
Comcast Corp., the third largest cable operator in the United States, unveiled plans to offer primary-line residential IP voice services in an unnamed Philadelphia, Pa., suburb "during the second quarter of 2003." The company says it has already begun to install equipment.
The announcement is significant because it is the first commitment to a primary-line deployment by a U.S. cable company beyond market trials.
Comcast gave few details about the service that it will deploy, except to say that it would offer "competitive pricing, high-quality service and other features, as well as providing a platform for new types of communications services." It also did not specify how many customers will be offered the service. Other details are expected to emerge when the company announces the specifics of the technology it will use.
Steve Craddock, senior vice president, new media development, Comcast, says the company is preparing to reveal the first wave of its voice-over-IP technology providers for the project "within days," an announcement that will be of critical importance to a number of IP voice vendors.
The service will use multiple providers of VoIP technology, and, for that reason, Comcast is taking its time on its first public statement on vendors. "If you are moving to a multivendor [deployment], it takes little longer to issue decisions,? Craddock says. Comcast ?tested 10 switches here in our lab. So it could be one or two of them," says Craddock, who declined to be more specific about the company's choices.
Although the next announcement may name just a single provider in some categories, Craddock says it is unlikely one vendor can fill all needs. "No one switch can do all," he says. "One is designed better for one application, and another would be better for other applications. There are different sizes and different markets."
Among the IP voice companies that have wooed the cable industry are softswitch maker Syndeo Corp., media gateway firm Nuera Communications Inc. and electronics giant Motorola Inc.
Only one "initial" vendor, ARRIS, is confirmed. ARRIS, a developer and integrator of cable transmission systems, will provide the cable modem termination system (CMTS), basically an aggregation platform.
The deployment will use NCS (network-based call signaling), a variant of MGCP (media gateway control protocol), between call agents (softswitches and/or gateways) and end points. SIP will be used only for signaling among call agents. "That was always the way we wanted to have call agents talk to each other, peer to peer, but we haven?t really embraced end points doing that," says Craddock.
SIP's peer-to-peer signaling has not found favor with many in the cable industry. "DOCSIS has hooks for setting up network resources for a call, and SIP doesn?t do a good job of synchronizing the two ends [of a call]," Craddock explains. "You can use it for gaming, and we probably will do that. But, in terms of trying to get quality, Class 5, private-line voice, we have always been of the opinion that you need network oversight."
The ARRIS Cadant C4 product is certified by CableLabs Inc., the industry's research and standards organization, as conforming to DOCSIS 1.1 (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specifications) and manages the transmission and routing of IP packets in a cable network.
The fact that the announcement was made nearly a year early suggests that Comcast has a strong interest in IP voice deployments, but gives while the company ample time to change or refine the technological specifics of its actual installations. |
