Nortel CS1500 fires on three cylinders
more on the topic
From South Dakota through Quebec and on to Switzerland, Nortel is proving the versatility of its convergent product portfolio. The company announced this week that Quebec cable operator, Videotron, Swiss independent provider TDC and South Dakota rural operators, Golden West Telecom and Venture Communications Cooperative have begun implementing its voice-over-IP and multimedia solutions.
Vidéotron is Quebec's leading cable operator. It has signed a multi-year agreement with Nortel, which will provide VoIP technology and professional services for the operator’s telephony services implementation. This includes project management, multi-vendor integration and testing, security assessment, and deployment of its IMS architecture products.
These products include Nortel’s PacketCable-qualified Communications Server (CS) 2000 Compact softswitch and the Nuera BTX 4000 media gateway. Vidéotron will be using both PacketCable and SIP protocols to create both residential and business services. Vidéotron's VoIP service will leverage its existing Optical DWDM and SONET network, which employ Nortel Metro Ethernet Networks products, including the Optical Metro 5100 and Optical Metro 3500.
Since launching its telephony service in January 2005, Vidéotron has amassed more than a quarter of a million customers, almost half of which we acquired in the first half of this year.
“2006 been a real ramp up year for cable telephony and Videotron has been a part of that,” said Elaine Smiles, director of Cable Marketing at Nortel. “They expect their subscriber base to grow at the same positive rates other cable providers in North America are experiencing.”
Videotron is the 26th cable operator to have chosen Nortel as its provider of telephony infrastructure. “So we have quite an established base of VoIP deployments,” Smiles said.
She also said that cable operators are buying into the concept of IMS. “They are firmly on the page of IMS. It’s just a question of when and why. They want to see a very logical series of steps toward the evolution of IMS and make sure there is a good, profitable reason to make the investment,” Smiles said.
Golden West is one of the first customers to contract for Nortel’s CS 1500 Communications Server. “Part of their goal is delivering advanced communications and reducing their cost,” said Rob Scheible, senior marketing manager for carrier VoIP and multimedia at Nortel.
The CS 1500 is a second-generation VoIP softswitch designed for small and medium-sized wireline service providers. It also allows Greenfield service providers to offer advanced services and lays the foundation for future IMS-based multimedia services and provider users of the Nortel DMS-10 and DMS-100 users with a migration path. CS 1500 runs on a small footprint platform, supports SIP-based services and provides
Golden West is a long-time Nortel customer. As the largest independent company in South Dakota, it serves approximately 47,000 customers and is using the CS 1500 to migrate them from a Nortel competitor’s switching gear.
Venture Communications serves the central and northeastern portion of South Dakota. It serves over 13.500 customers. It, too, bought Nortel’s VoIP solutions and will deploy them with an eye on future IMS deployments. The company is planning a fiber-to-the-home deployment.
“Part of that is their desire to use a fiber ONT at the customers’ homes for SIP control. So they will use the CS1500 to provide all their voice services over that connection,” Scheible said.
TDC Switzerland AG, doing business as sunrise, is building the country’s first SIP-based multimedia services using Nortel’s CS 2000 Compact softswitch, the Multimedia Communications Server 5200, the Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 8600 and switched firewall solutions.
“This is part of their new brand to create Web-based services,” Scheible said. “They are focused on delivering mobile video and wanted to get a set of services in place to utilize their broadband network and to grow demand and revenue.”
Related Articles
popular articles
Want to use this article? Click here for options!
© 2008 Penton Media Inc.
