interesting/Cox's 1st voIP deployment [mystery vendors, with more being looked at]
Cox Cable Deploys First VoIP Service
Making its first move into voice over IP after offering TDM phone for more than five years, Cox Communications Inc., the third-largest cable operator in the United States with 6.5 million subscribers, announced its first IP voice offering.
Cox has deployed an IP voice service in its Roanoke, Va., system, which has 58,000 customers. The company is offering the service commercially. Cox offers TDM voice in 11 other markets in the United States.
The offerings are Cox Connection 60 for $30.95, which offers unlimited local calls and 60 long distance minutes with a charge of 7 cents a minute after that. The other package is the Unlimited Connection plan with unlimited local and long distance calls for $49.95.
Although there were not specifics about features in the IP voice service, Cox other TDM voice services include caller ID, call waiting, call waiting ID, three-way calling, selective call acceptance, selective call rejections, busy line redial, speed call 8, all forwarding, selective call forward, call forwarding on busy, call forward on no answer, call return, long distance alert and priority ringing.
Mystery Vendors
Cox would not reveal the vendors for this service, though it did say that the service is based on a softswitch architecture. Suppliers linked to Cox voice-over-IP trials in the past have been Nuera Communications Inc., which provides a gateway, and Nortel Networks Inc.'s Communication Server 2000 softswitch. Neither would confirm whether or not it is part of this limited deployment.
A Cox spokesperson says the vendor are not identified because the company is still hedging its bets with regard to VoIP infrastructure. "Their names are not associated with the launch at this time because we are going to be looking at many other vendors as we consider future deployment."
That is a strategy other cable operators are following because the industry still faces many technical and business decisions about how it deploys IP voice. Operators are weighing the relative merits of sticking with the industry's home-grown NCS signaling or following the rest of the world to SIP. There is also the question of how to power a network so voice service will be preserved in the event of a power outage, an expensive proposition. |
