CHICAGO--Montana’s 3 Rivers Communications purchased and installed five CopperCom Converged Switching eXchange (CSX) next-generation softswitches as part of what Coppercom called this week an aggressive transition to next-generation services.

Coppercom also brought Occam Networks into its partner alliance and opened a training center in Iowa, one of its most successful markets.

The five-switch upgrade at 3 Rivers will help to the company deploy new services, in particular voice-over-IP for fixed wireless.

“It’s been thirty years since the first digital switches went in, and it seems the replacement cycle is starting to take a different flavor, more aggressive,” said Chuck Harris, vice president of marketing at Coppercom.

The CSX supports both advanced VoIP services as well as legacy voice services and personalized control of features via the Switchmaxx Unified Self-Care Web portal. 3 Rivers will use the CSXs to support its 22,000 business and residential lines across 13 counties in Montana with dial-up Internet, DSL broadband Internet, combined wireless and local phone, satellite TV, and satellite broadband Internet, along with traditional local phone service.

The partnership with Occam has resulted in opportunities for joint development; formal interoperability testing and certification in a controlled environment and joint marketing opportunities for program partners. Occam is a supplier of Ethernet- and IP-based loop carrier equipment and has installed its equipment in CopperCom’s customer-facing demonstration lab. The lab incorporates central and remote office architectures, as well as outside plant and customer premise equipment, and showcases alliance-certified offerings in a live environment.

“When customers put out [requests for proposal], they often ask for your partner or interoperability list. We’ve always had a partner program but now we have opened an interoperability lab,” Harris said. “Occam is a strong enough player that it made sense to have each other’s equipment in the labs to make sure the solution is rock solid before companies try to deploy it themselves,”

CopperCom and Occam have completed interoperability testing on GR-303. The companies have exchanged equipment for separate test beds and will begin interoperability testing with SIP and MGCP this summer.

With 25 to 30 of Iowa’s approximately 163 independent telcos, Coppercom felt it was time to expand its training facilities and did so with an expansion at its home base in Boca Raton, Fla., and the establishment of a new center in Iowa.

“We had real breakout years in Iowa in 2004 and 2005. Opening a remote training center doubled the size of our training capacity,” Harris said. “It’s driven by growing demand and because the IOCs are getting more aggressive in terms of next-generation services.”