Liberty brings new telephony services to it customers (NTOP)
By Marialba Martinez of Caribbean Business
Friday, May 28th, 2004.
Liberty Cablevision of Puerto Rico Inc.’s new telephony service, Liberty Voice Links, is now available to nearly 300,000 homes. Voice Links is the first Internet protocol (IP) phone service to provide the advantages of Voice over IP (VoIP) to residential phones. The service, provided through cable TV lines, will be an alternative to traditional phone systems.
With Liberty’s new service, customers will be able to receive and make calls that are just as clear as when they used traditional phone lines. Liberty Voice Links also provides additional services free of charge, including caller identification, call forwarding, call waiting, distinctive ring, and other features.
The service will be available to 95% of Liberty’s current users and will also include unlimited free local calls to landlines and cellular phones, free 911 calls, and reduced charges for long-distance calls.
“VoIP technology isn’t new to Liberty. Back in 2002, the company was the first to place a call from Puerto Rico using VoIP technology through cable lines,” said Jose Alegria, general manager of Liberty of Puerto Rico Inc. “Since then, we have been working with this technology and analyzing how to integrate it into our services.
However, before launching the service, we wanted to make sure that we could provide quality telephony service.”
In a first phase, the company provided free telephony services to 200 customers in the Luquillo area. During its second phase, Liberty began providing Voice Links to 1,000 paying customers.
“Throughout this period, Liberty has worked hard to solve problems in the system,” said Alegria. “The service has found great acceptance among its users. The key is that we make sure sound quality stays within an established parameter that is equal to or surpasses the quality of traditional telephone service,” he said.
Liberty will offer five different monthly plans starting at $24.99. According to Alegria, Voice Links could represent a 49% savings when its combined services are compared with other providers.
Voice Link works with Liberty’s cable modem system, which can be plugged into up to two traditional phones. When a call is made, its signal is converted into IP signals that then travel through Liberty’s cable system to the company’s data network. There, the call is dispatched to other IP phones or to traditional phone lines.
“Liberty’s new service will give the consumer another option when selecting its telephone company. Consumers won’t have to use Puerto Rico Telephone Company. Instead they can compare companies and choose which one will give them more free features,” said Alegria. |
