TelcoTV: Eatel deploys Integra5
By Dan O'Shea
DALLAS--Eatel, a private, independent telco based in Ascension Parish, La., has deployed Integra5’s i5 Converged Service Delivery Platform to support TV-based caller ID and other applications from the vendor’s i-Communicate application suite...
Nortel CS1500 fires on three cylinders
By Tim McElligott
From South Dakota through Quebec and on to Switzerland, Nortel is proving the versatility of its convergent product portfolio. ...
Rural providers keeping pace with DSL
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...
VON: Empirix all aglow
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 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...
Harmonic intros new MPEG-4 encoders
By Ed Gubbins
Harmonic introduced a new MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) standard-definition (SD) encoder today...
Hatteras gets mid-band Ethernet on RUS list
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 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 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...
Sonus adds SBC function to small border switch
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 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.”...
OPASTCO: Peering offers ILECs real promise
By Carol Wilson
HOT SPRINGS, Va.--Independent telephone companies face major competition from the newly merged AT&T and Verizon, as well as from wireless substitution and cable VoIP services. But they can head some of those threats off by offering their own VoIP and IP-services and creating a nationwide peering network...
OPASTCO: Video not always the answer
By Carol Wilson
HOT SPRINGS, Va.--Video may be the hot topic for many large telecom service providers, but it doesn't always make good business sense for smaller telcos, a couple of industry leaders warned today....
Ruckus raises one in rural markets
By Dan O'Shea
Ruckus Wireless, a Sunnyvale, Calif., company whose MediaFlex router solution strengthens 802.11b/g signals for better in-home distribution of services such as IPTV and voice over Wi-Fi, said it recently has added 15 rural service providers to its previous customer base of six rural telcos....
Keeping customer service at home
By Stephanie Dell
Bucking the trend of outsourcing customer service overseas, Alltel is expanding and investing in its customer service call centers in the U.S....
The upside to different
By Tim McElligott
Montana's Chinook Wireless goes against the grain in more ways than one as it converts its network from CDMA to GSM and stakes its five-year plan on being the alternative...
An MPEG alternative
Ed Gubbins
Rural telcos have a particular dilemma in trying to deliver video to their customers: namely, the threat of signal degradation as video traffic treks across the long copper loops that span the lonesome prairies...
Content, set-top stars align for MPEG-4 debut
By Carol Wilson
The MPEG-4 clouds are about to part for IPTV deployment by independent telcos...
Communicating in an unconquerable land
By Tim McElligott
With the amount of work under way and under review at Montana's 3 Rivers Communications, a few more elk, mule deer and black bears may just avoid the piercing arrow or the bullet and live to see another season. Who has time for the hunt?...
Texas telco first to roll out NRTC IPTV
By Ed Gubbins
Valley Telephone Cooperative (VTCI), a rural telco based in Raymondville, Texas, will become the first telco co-op to roll out IPTV service using a turnkey video offering provided by the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative (NRTC)...
Globalcomm: 3 Rivers buys CopperCom switches in fives
By Tim McElligott
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...
Globalcomm: Nortel gets small with softswitch
By Tim McElligott
CHICAGO--Nortel unveiled a new, smaller softswitch this week aimed at the small- to medium-sized service provider market. The Nortel Communication Server 1500 (CS 1500) can be seen at Globalcomm and will begin field trials in the fourth ...
Grand Mound expands CLEC with CopperCom switch
By Tim McElligott
Grand Mound Cooperative Telephone Association has replaced its legacy Class 5 switching system with CopperCom’s Converged Switching eXchange next-generation switch as part of the Iowa-based CLEC expansion strategy...
WiMAX World: New chips, new execs, new deployments
By Kevin Fitchard
WiMAX technologist Wavesat is putting mobility in Fixed WiMAX--or at least portability. At WiMAX World Europe in Vienna this week, the chip vendor offered a sneak peek at a system on a chip WiMAX solution that supports nomadic capabilities...
