Lucent Technologies and business partner LightRiver Technologies will be replacing legacy Class 5 technology at Industry Telephone with Lucent's Compact Switch. The Industry, Texas-based provider will initially use the former Telica product for IP-based trunking.

The Compact Switch is part of Lucent's Accelerate Next-Generation Communications Solutions, which supports local and long-distance voice services over IP and traditional networks. Industry Telephone serves approximately 2000 subscribers in the southeast region of Texas. Along with its subsidiary, Industry I-NET, it offers POTS, ISDN, broadband Internet access, Web hosting, wireless and now VoIP in its transport facilities.

"For now, it lowers the cost of long-distance access for their subscribers," said Jim Lane, product manager for Lucent's Compact Switch. "And the product will support IP access anytime they want it."

Lafayette, Calif.-based LightRiver will provide the switch and a full set of turnkey professional services, including engineering, installation, testing, training and technical support. The Compact Switch gives independent telephone companies like Industry Telephone the flexibility to offer VoIP access and to evolve to an IP Multimedia Subsystem architecture in the future.

IMS is not just for huge wireless carriers or large RBOCs, Lane said. "Even among smaller carriers, we see a lot of building interest in IMS architecture and for being able to offer converged services," he said. "Smaller, independents have a history of being a bit on the cutting edge of technology and in a lot of cases are earlier adopters than the large phone companies and the ability to offer multiple services on one platform has a lot of appeal to these guys."

Lucent also announced a new high-performance DS1 blade for the Compact Switch and its Network Gateway. The new blade can simultaneously support multiple combinations of signaling protocols on a single card, including SS7, GR 303 and PRI. Lane said the real difference in the new blade is a much more powerful microprocessor.

In addition, Lucent introduced a compact switch "starter-bundle" configuration and pricing for the small Class 5 switching market. The Compact Switch can support as few as 1,000 subscribers or as many as 100,000 on a single integrated platform. It can be deployed as an end-office Class 5 or a tandem Class 4 switch.