Weekly Erlang: A Digest of Telephony News Traffic

The Final Word Everyone and his brother and/or cousin has commented on the recent FCC decision to reclassify DSL as an information service rather than a telecommunications service, effectively putting it on a level footing with cable modems. Somehow, in the mix, the telephony angle-cable coming into the telephone voice space, telephone providers dealing with regulations up the wazoo-has been missed. Even the NCTA apparently didn’t care about the voice angle when it released a statement from President-CEO Kyle McSlarrow "applauding" the decision and inviting "the telephone companies to take a similar approach to regulation of video services and drop their self-serving demands for special treatment by the government when entering the video marketplace." To paraphrase Jan Brady: "Video, video, video. What about audio?" Won’t there eventually be a move to deregulate or at least loosen the strings on those ever-so-tightly bound voice services? Bresnan Chooses Arris Bresnan Communications, now operating in a four-state Rocky Mountain region, will use Arris’s Touchstone embedded multimedia terminal adapters (EMTAs) in its phone markets. The product delivers two lines of primary line VoIP as well as high-speed data access. This Week’s Vonage Byte Brightpoint North America has inked a deal with Motorola’s Connected Home Solutions business to distribute Moto’s broadband voice gateways in support of the Vonage Master Agent program, lending a little more legitimacy to the ubiquitous competitive VoIP provider. If It Isn’t Vonage, It’s Skype While most everybody stays focused on Vonage-mainly because it’s a publicity machine-Skype lurks in the background and is now coming forward with a new claim that research from intelligent broadband equipment maker Sandvine shows Skype leading the provider pack in North American VoIP with 35.8 percent of all VoIP calls and a 46.2 percent share of minutes. Vonage, Primus and AT&T CallVantage captured the next three positions-and the MSOs were nowhere to be seen. To verify Skype’s dominant position, the ever-present Brightpoint said it would act as an authorized distributor of Skype products and services. Finally, mobile Internet phone company iSkoot said it’s offering free unlimited use of its call forwarding software for the Skype service for 30 days, allowing users to forward Internet calls from their online Skype buddies to any phone number. After the trial is over, the service will be fee-based. It costs $9.95 a year for users to access the iSkoot messaging network and place calls to online buddies over the Internet from any cell phone. Canadian Front Bruce Municipal Telephone System has chosen Pannaway Technologies’ converged broadband voice, video and data platform to deliver broadband services to its 15,000 subscribers in Bruce County, Ontario, Canada. The telco is migrating away from TDM equipment to a next generation of SIP-enabled IP applications and services. CommPartners Expands Footprint IP-based network operator and telephony services and solutions provider CommPartners said it has again expanded its VoIP network coverage area to now include more than 92 percent of the calling public in the domestic United States, including Hawaii. CommPartners claims to offer the broadest IP-based network coverage to deliver residential, small-medium business and enterprise hosted VoIP services with more than 5,000 rate centers in the domestic United States. Rolling in Money Cedar Point Communications has raised an additional $15 million in financing as it continues the good fight to drive the cable industry into the VoIP space. The financing was led by Focus Ventures and included participation from Ascent Venture Partners, Battery Ventures, Charles River Ventures, Comcast Interactive Capital, JP Morgan Partners, Motorola Ventures and STAR Ventures