LAS VEGAS--Calix and MetaSwitch used Comptel to announce the first fruits of their joint development partnership, including two customers and completion of joint H.248 interoperability testing.

The two customers are PCS1, a Southern California CLEC, and MNSi, a CLEC based on Windsor, Ontario, Canada.

Separately, MetaSwitch announced new voice conferencing capabilities for its UC9000 Unified Communications application suite. The UC 9000 Conference Server enables easy set-up for SIP-based voice conferences of up to 500 participants using a Web-based interface.

“This is an expansion of the application service suite we announced two years ago,” said Andy Randall, vice president of marketing at MetaSwitch. “Our customers are increasingly moving to IP-based platforms. We can now introduce functionality like this in software with SIP-based interfaces. This is the next piece in terms of conferencing.”

The significance of the Calix-MetaSwitch partnership is that it enables customers who have already moved to IP in the transport portion of their networks to transition the access portion to IP as well, Randall said, gaining the same efficiencies in their access networks in the process that IP brought to the transport section.

“As they start to think about applications like IPTV, they need to move to IP access,” he said. “The advantage of Calix is that their access platform supports both copper-based and fiber-based networks. Customers who start with copper are now starting to roll out fiber access.”

“MetaSwitch and Calix individually provide state-of-the-art solutions that address key pain points for PCS1 as our customers migrate to IP-based communications solutions,” said Devin Semler, CEO of PCS1, in a prepared statement. “Together, the combination of Calix and MetaSwitch has greatly improved the reliability of our network and rapidly decreased the time it takes to turn up a new central office compared with the previous generation of access technologies. With more than 75 CO conversions now under our belt, we feel very comfortable with this technology.”