Embarq ushers in true FMC
By: By Tim McElligott
Embarq delivered on its strategy today to bring fixed/mobile convergence to the marketplace. The company announced the launch of Smart Connect, a service that allows the seamless transfer of calls between a business’ wireless and wireline networks...
FCC opens video inquiry
By: By Carol Wilson
The Federal Communications Commission today said it will conduct an assessment of competition in the video market, to include the impact of Internet-based video and IPTV...
Comptel: MetaSwitch, Cisco team up on CLEC solution
By: By Carol Wilson
ORLANDO--MetaSwitch and Cisco Systems have teamed up to deliver what they are calling a SIMPLE solution for CLECs, and have signed 20 customers to the offering...
Survey: Consumers will pay for convergence
By: By Carol Wilson
Some new research by an independent telco in South Carolina shows broadband customers do want new convergence features and are willing to pay for them...
Nortel CS1500 fires on three cylinders
By: By Tim McElligott
From South Dakota through Quebec and on to Switzerland, Nortel is proving the versatility of its convergent product portfolio. ...
Adelstein assures rural telcos at NECA Expo
By: By Tim McElligott
FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein reassured the rural telecom community that the commission is working to ensure their ability to compete and deliver broadband services to their markets during his address yesterday to more than 800 attendees at the NECA Expo in Las Vegas...
Rural providers keeping pace with DSL
By: By Tim McElligott
The National Exchange Carrier Association today issued a progress report on rural telephone companies’ broadband deployment efforts and said that despite operating in low-density, higher-cost markets, they match the penetration rates of non-rural carriers...
Citizens buys Commonwealth Tel for $1.16 billion
By: By Carol Wilson
Citizen Communications announced today it will acquire Pennsylvania-based Commonwealth Telephone for $1.16 billion, extending its rural telco footprint and creating the seventh largest U.S. telephone company ...
VON: CopperCom’s capture of IOCs continues
By: By Tim McElligott
BOSTON--With a range of solutions and deployment scenarios from switch replacement and cap-and-grow scenarios to customer care and voicemail, CopperCom announced this week it has racked up four more independent operating company customers...
VON: Empirix all aglow
By: By Tim McElligott
BOSTON--Monitoring and test company Empirix threw itself a party this week at VON, but the company had more to celebrate than its technology’s fifteenth birthday and its fifth anniversary as an independent company...
VON: SunRocket chooses GC’s peering service
By: By Carol Wilson
BOSTON--Global Crossing announced this week that VoIP provider SunRocket will use its new VoIP peering solution, becoming the first announced customer of the service launched last week...
Investors continue to support SunRocket
By: By Tim McElligott
Internet phone service provider SunRocket announced a $33 million round of Series C institutional financing today, bringing the firm’s total venture capital raised to approximately $80 million...
Calls for unity at CoBank conference
By: By Tim McElligott
Acknowledging the strength in numbers, independent and cooperative telecom companies and their financiers spoke this week at the 2006 CoBank Executive Forum in Beaver Creek, Colo., about the need for a more unified front to regulators and equipment vendors...
Harmonic intros new MPEG-4 encoders
By: By Ed Gubbins
Harmonic introduced a new MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) standard-definition (SD) encoder today...
SureWest bumps up DSL speeds
By: By Carol Wilson
SureWest announced late Tuesday that it will increase the speeds of the Internet access service it sells to long-time Roseville, Calif., customers. ...
Hatteras gets mid-band Ethernet on RUS list
By: By Tim McElligott
This week, Hatteras Networks announced that its Mid-Band Ethernet products have made the list thanks to deployments at Farmers Telephone Cooperative, Atlantic Telephone Membership Cooperative and Home Telephone Co....
In the Spotlight: Diane Smith, Auroras
By: By Tim McElligott
Diane Smith is CEO of Auroras. Auroras is a start-up that is about to commercially launch its head-end-in-the-sky (HITS) after a trial with 3 Rivers Communications and others. A HITS is a satellite-based content distribution system for IPTV. IPTV content has been hard to come by. Smith talked to Telephony’s Tim McElligott about her company, how she got there and why the time is right for a company like Auroras, even if it is way out in Kalispell, Mont....
Pannaway gets on the Polar Express
By: By Tim McElligott
Two years into its five-year network upgrade across North Dakota, independent local exchange carrier Polar Communications said this week it is happy with its choice of Pannaway Technologies as a provider for access and transport gear...
Verizon owns 81% of U.S. FTTH subs
By: By Ed Gubbins
Verizon Communications owns about 81% of all fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) subscribers in the United States, according to a report released today from Ovum-RHK...
SureWest continues operational revamp in Q2
By: By Tim McElligott
With two quarters under his belt as CEO, SureWest's Steve Oldham is looking to the future and a long-term payoff to his cost-cutting initiatives and operational changes. ...
Sonus adds SBC function to small border switch
By: By Tim McElligott
Sonus Networks shrunk the form factor in a new border switch but still found room to incorporate session border control functionality to the gear....
Cable's IP push may await 2008
By: By Carol Wilson
Cable companies are exploring use of IP to offer nteractive TV services, but face economic challenges that could delay that effort until 2008 or after, said Michael Arden, principal analyst and author of the new study, “Worldwide Cable TV Infrastructure, CPE and Services.”...
Acme Packet gets RUS for session border control
By: By Tim McElligott
Halfway through 2006, Acme Packet beat its full 2005 revenue, according to yesterday’s latest SEC filling. The rest of the year could include ringing up more revenue from independent operators thanks to long-standing deployments of its session border control solutions, particularly its Net-Net 4000 SBC, that have led to the company’s acceptance for listing by the United States Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service ...
MetaSwitch takes aim at cable industry
By: By Carol Wilson
Having firmly established its softswitch technology in the independent and competitive telephone markets, MetaSwitch is expanding its focus to the cable TV industry, announcing a new product platform designed to let cable companies provide business VoIP services....
OPASTCO: IPTV players may need consortium
By: By Carol Wilson
HOT SPRINGS, Va.--As the number of independent telcos getting into IPTV is booming, the time may be right for a national consortium aimed at helping resolve integration issues and possibly addressing content acquisition, similar to the cable industry’s CableLabs...
