Let the distorted pr-puff begin> Frustrated Consumers Ready to Buy Phone Services From Cable Companies.
December 3, 1998
ANAHEIM, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)
Fed Up with High Costs and Reduced Line
Availability, 80 Percent of Consumers Would Consider an
Alternate Provider for Voice Services
According to a nationwide poll conducted by
ICR Survey Research Group, more than half of
American households are frustrated with their
phone services and would consider using cable
operators, ISPs or electric utilities for their
voice services.
The study, commissioned by Vienna Systems,
a leading IP telephony systems provider, also
showed that 80 percent of consumers would
consider alternate service providers to save
money and add extra lines and nearly a
quarter would look specifically to cable
companies for these services.
"ICR's survey clearly proves there is a market
for secondary dial tone from alternate service
providers," said T. Kent Elliott, president and
chief executive officer of Vienna Systems.
"Cable companies already have a relationship
with the residential consumer, a strong
presence in the home and they own the local
loop, giving them a unique opportunity to
deliver affordable voice services and multiple
phone lines to consumers."
The study, which 1,002 Americans age 18 and
above, found that nearly 90 percent of
consumers are using their phone lines for more
than phone calls and would benefit from
multiple lines into their homes. The study also
found:
-- 53% are frustrated with their current long
distance provider
-- 32% have changed long distance
companies to reduce costs
-- 77% said their line was in use a majority of
the time
Consumers would consider alternate service
providers including:
-- Internet service providers
-- Cable television providers
-- Electric utilities
-- Cellular providers
For more information on the survey please
visit the Vienna Web site at
viennasys.com.
The Cable Industry Calls on Vienna
Vienna's IP Telephony solutions enable cable
companies to rapidly expand their offerings to
include voice services, leverage their existing
HFC infrastructure and generate incremental
revenues from their customer base. Vienna
has been involved with the CableLabs
initiatives and has worked closely with Telia,
the Swedish telecom giant, and other services
providers to pilot IP Telephony services over
cable networks. Telia, through a subsidiary
cable company, is currently involved in a IP
Telephony/cable trial that involves both an IP
Centrex offering for businesses and a
second-line phone solution for residential
customers.
"We certainly have seen a great deal of
interest in IP Telephony from cable operators
in the last few months," said Dan MacDonald,
vice president of marketing for Vienna.
"Vienna's IP Telephony solution is considered
by many operators to be an attractive
alternative to the traditional Class 5 central
office for provisioning voice services."
Vienna's Distributed IP Telephony Architecture
and IPShuttle
Vienna's IPShuttle and its supporting
distributed IP Telephony architecture is set to
become the de facto standard for delivering IP
Telephony solutions. IPShuttle is a small
analog-to-Ethernet device that enables
standard telephones to communicate over IP
networks directly, operating independently of
a PC. Each IPShuttle is capable of handling
two separate telephones.
With Vienna's Call Processing Server,
gateways and supporting components
installed in the cable office, incoming traffic
from the public switched telephone network
(PSTN) can be converted to IP traffic and
then transmitted over Ethernet to the
head-end. The traffic is then transmitted over
coaxial cable to subscribers. The compact
IPShuttle connected to a standard cable
modem delivers up to two additional phone
lines to the subscriber.
"The proliferation of Internet use together
with the frustration that consumers have with
low access speeds and telephone line tie-up
has opened a huge opportunity for cable
operators. The combination of a cable modem
and Vienna's IPShuttle solves both problems
very nicely," said MacDonald.
Vienna Systems
Vienna Systems develops and markets
hardware and software products and client
devices to provide complete IP telephony
networking solutions for telephone and
Internet service providers, cable companies
and corporations that want to offer new
services or reduce information technology
costs by integrating voice in IP-based
networks.
Vienna, with years of telephony experience,
offers carrier-class to residential gateways,
call-processing servers, telephones and PC
software which lead the industry in scalability,
reliability and voice quality.
CONTACT: Vienna Systems Corporation |
Louise Labuda, 613/591-7455 |
llabuda@viennasys.com | or | GCI Group |
Todd Tornga, 415/974-7288 |
ttornga@gcigroup.com
[Copyright 1998, Business Wire]
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