...what ntop did with bresnan --
Bresnan Finds Its Voice
First-Class Plant, Experienced Integrator and Incentives Accelerate Deployment
January 2005 Issue
Communications Technology
Bresnan Communications signed a multi-year voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) agreement with Net2Phone, a self-described PacketCable integrator. A trial is underway in an unspecified Colorado market, while commercial launch is slated for the first half of 2005.
The deal includes Net2Phone's warrant incentive program, which grants the right to purchase common stock based on telephony subscriber targets. Bresnan is the first U.S. company to announce participation.
Net2Phone issues 2.5 warrants per digital two-way home passed. They vest at a rate of 10 warrants per digital telephony subscriber per period. The target penetration is 25 percent.
"We viewed the warrant program as a way to help the management teams of [cable operators] focus on telephony," says Michael Pastor, president, Net2Phone Cable Telephony.
Time-to-market
While the warrant program is "gravy," Bresnan selected Net2Phone because of its "flexible business model" and its experience with Liberty Cablevision in Puerto Rico, particularly with regards to operations support systems (OSS) integration, says Leonard Higgins, Bresnan senior vice president of advanced services. "It is important to us to roll out service quickly."
Bresnan's advantage, Pastor says, is that it has been upgrading aggressively, including former AT&T Broadband systems it purchased in 2003 from Comcast. "In a majority of its markets, [Bresnan's network] is as close to state of the art as it can be," he adds.
In the systems Bresnan upgraded itself, "very little plant hardening" is needed, Higgins says. In systems AT&T upgraded, there still are larger node sizes and longer cascades, which have to be reduced and shortened, respectively.
Bresnan will offer its VoIP as a primary-line alternative. The company is using the Motorola BSR 64000 cable modem termination system (CMTS) and the Cisco uBR7246-VXR, which it will arrange in a redundant configuration, Higgins says. The Arris Touchstone TM 402P embedded multimedia terminal adapter (EMTA) includes a backup battery, and Bresnan will provide backup powering at the node.
Net2Phone will use the Cedar Point Communications Safari C3 Media Switching System. Bresnan's markets will be broken into seven or eight hubs with ancillary markets tied to them.
"We are providing [Bresnan] with unlimited local and domestic long distance calling so they don't have to worry about the risk of usage for any of their subscribers. That is Net2Phone's risk," Pastor says. Net2Phone also will provide proactive VoIP management. The company's solution gathers data in real time, compares it to internal algorithms and issues alarms.
-Monta Monaco Hernon |
