Thread,
Well this is interesting news. Maybe I am jumping the gun about VoIP being five years off? I wish I lived in this area and I would be the first to sign up to see how well it works.
MikeM(From Florida)
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Voicenet Selects Cisco to LaunchAdvanced Low-Cost Voice Services for Mid-Atlantic Region
SAN JOSE, Calif.--Feb. 17, 1999--
Voicenet Builds Service on VoIP Cisco AS5300 Universal Access Servers, Cisco 3600 Modular Multifunction Access Routers to Provide IP Telephony Services
Cisco Systems, Inc. today announced that Voicenet, the largest Internet service provider (ISP) in the Pennsylvania area, has selected the Cisco AS5300 Universal Access Server and Cisco 3600 Multifunction Access Router to provide long-distance voice and fax telephone services to its over 100,000 users in the Mid-Atlantic region.
Voicenet has been a Cisco Universal Access Server customer since the first Cisco Universal Access Server shipped in 1995, and is now upgrading its Cisco Access Server installation by adding voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to its IP network.
Voicenet is the first ISP in the region to offer Internet Telephone services for homes and businesses, utilizing conventional telephones for local and long-distance calls over the Internet. Voicenet's deployment of VoIP began 60 days ago, and already includes thousands of residential and commercial customers throughout Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Delaware.
"We chose Cisco to help us deploy this state-of-the-art network because of the integrated Cisco IOS(R) software end-to-end solution, and the quality and reliability of the equipment," said Carmen DiCamillo, president of Voicenet.
"We tested Cisco's voice quality extensively at the University of Delaware, and found it to be excellent and superior to competitive offerings. Cisco sees the larger picture and is offering the full suite of a new generation of telecommunications solutions; they are the ideal partner for Voicenet to align with for the long term."
"Voicenet is at the forefront of VoIP deployment," said Roland Acra, vice president and general manager of Cisco's Remote Access Business Unit. "The voice telephony product that they are delivering today not only offers tremendous savings to their customers, but also equals or exceeds the sound quality of conventional telephone service. We applaud their innovation and the benefits they are delivering to Mid-Atlantic based consumers." |
