Bresnan expands in digital phone game
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Bresnan Communications used NTOP VoiceLine:
web.net2phone.com
Bresnan expands in digital phone game
By JO DEE BLACK
Tribune Staff Writer
12/6/05
You dial the same way and use your existing phone, but Great Falls residents have a new alternative to traditional wire and cellular phone service. Bresnan Communications now offers a digital local and long distance telephone option.
Voice data is carried over Bresnan's cable lines and links into the public telecommunications network. Customers who make the switch can keep their current phone number, according to Bresnan.
The service costs a flat monthly fee and includes features such as call forwarding, caller ID, voicemail and call waiting.
The cable television and high-speed Internet company already offers phone service in Billings, Butte, Helena, Missoula and Bozeman. By the end of 2006, Bresnan plans to bring phone service to its entire upgrade system, which includes about 96 percent of the company's Montana cable network.
The technology, known as "voice over Internet protocol," is catching the attention of some lawmakers, including Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont. They want voice over Internet protocol phone service, or VoIP, providers to make sure customers reach local emergency service when calling 9-1-1.
"It's an important piece of public safety to ensure that if a call is placed to 9-1-1 from one of these phones that the calls go to the nearest responder," said James Pendleton, spokesman for Burns.
The Bresnan system supports Enhanced 9-1-1 service, said Maureen Huff, a Bresnan spokeswoman.
Burns also is a co-sponsor of a Senate bill that requires VoIP providers to make sure their systems support Enhanced 9-1-1, or "E 9-1-1", services. The emergency system was designed to route calls placed from cellular phones — and now VoIP customers — to local emergency personnel.
"Bresnan, to my knowledge, already complies with the intent of this legislation," Pendleton said. "But other companies have not been as quick to do so."
Bresnan's system carries voice data across the company's cable system and not over the public Internet system, so service is clearer and more reliable, Huff said. "That's important, especially if a VoIP phone is a home's primary line," she said.
But emergency access isn't the only issue swirling around the new technology.
Some state regulators say that because VoIP service relies on the public telecommunications network to place some calls, compensation is due.
"If someone talks from one computer to another without ever crossing a phone line, I don't care," said Montana Public Service Commission Chairman Greg Jergeson. "But if those calls are taking up space on another company's lines, I think that company should be compensated."
For instance, calls from a VoIP phone service customer to a traditional wire line customer's phone are carried in part across a telephone company's lines.
The Montana PSC and other state regulating agencies are waiting for guidance from the Federal Communications Commission on the matter.
"The issue will probably be part of the mix when Congress considers rewriting the National Communications Act," Jergeson said. |
