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Las Vegas, NV: May 8, 2007 - The CABLE Show '07. With Cable Voice over IP (VoIP) showing dramatic growth,
especially in the lucrative business services market, MetaSwitch and Big River Telephone Company have joined to enable a significant
source of new revenue for cable system operators.
Using Big River's MetaSwitch-powered wholesale VoIP service, regional cable systems operators can simultaneously
achieve several ambitious goals:
- Launch feature-rich services to business subscribers
- Add significant new sources of residential revenue
- Create a package of services that will greatly enhance customer loyalty.
Seven cable providers have already adopted the combined Big River / MetaSwitch VoIP solution, including Eagle
Communications, NewWave Communications and Vista III Media. Big River anticipates signing up additional cable partners throughout
the United States based on the success of these initial deployments.
Based in Sikeston, MO, NewWave Communications provides cable television, high speed internet and digital
telephone service to customers in Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. NewWave
has seen tremendous success partnering with Big River to launch MetaSwitch-powered digital telephone service.
"Big River has been fantastic to work with. They took care of the entire process of adding voice to our
service bundle, and are clearly very experienced in managing all telecom-related issues," said Jim Gleason, NewWave
Communications' chief executive officer. "We now offer our residential and business customers advanced features that go above
and beyond the standard telephone features provided by the incumbent telephone companies."
Gleason added that the addition of voice, completing the triple play bundle of cable offerings, has lifted the
take rate of other services while reducing customer churn. "It's been a great addition to our product line up and has brought
with it some great cash flow," said Gleason.
According to the VoIP Services report issued by leading market research firm Infonetics, North American VoIP service
revenue will grow from $2.6 billion last year to $13.3 billion in 2009, with the market fairly equally split between business
and residential segments. According to the report, the primary driver for businesses around the world to migrate to IP is
increased functionality, greater flexibility, improved productivity, and the potential of growing revenue through better
customer service.
"We have found tremendous enthusiasm among the MSO community for the combination of MetaSwitch's feature-rich
platform and Big River's extensive experience deploying VoIP in our own network," said Jerry Howe, Big River's chief executive
officer. "Voice over cable now accounts for about a third of our business but will soon eclipse our embedded base of customers
because of the fast adoption of cable telephone service."
"Many MSOs are focused on maintaining all of the components of their cable systems and don't necessarily
want to invest in a VoIP switching system or the requisite staffing required to manage it. The reality is that voice is a bit of a
tricky beast. If they buy voice services at wholesale and sell at retail, they can focus on what they know best and maximize their
profits," he said.
Big River's product offerings include: IP Centrex, hosted PBX, T1 services over IP, unified messaging, voicemail,
simultaneous ring, teleconferencing, and find-me-follow-me services, complemented by 'sticky' Web-based interfaces. The company is
using the MetaSwitch distributed architecture to enable Big River's new products, with one softswitch located in St. Louis and
another at the company's Cape Girardeau, MO. headquarters. Media gateways can be located anywhere in the country to provide local
PSTN interfaces and an efficient network architecture.
About MetaSwitch
MetaSwitch is an industry-leading vendor of switching and applications solutions for both packet and
circuit-switched networks. Its widely deployed call agent, media/signaling gateway and application server platform supports a full
range of Class 4/5 capabilities and hosted unified communications services. Based on open standards including IP Multimedia Subsystem
(IMS), MetaSwitch solutions scale from a few hundred to millions of subscribers in both integrated and distributed configurations.
Customers include incumbent and competitive local exchange carriers, as well as operators of broadband wireless, cable and fiber
networks. MetaSwitch is a division of Data Connection, a consistently profitable and privately held telecom technology provider. For
more information, please visit www.metaswitch.com.
About Big River Telephone
Big River Telephone, with over twenty years of experience, is one of the oldest competitive telephone company
providers in the country, as well as the largest in the Southeast Missouri region. Big River Telephone brings network service
solutions to its customers and has the capabilities to meet businesses needs throughout the United States. The company focuses on
superior, personalized customer service and is the recipient of the 2005 Gartner award for excellence in CRM implementation. More
information is available at http://www.bigrivertelephone.com.
Data Connection and MetaSwitch are trademarks of Data Connection Limited and Data Connection Corporation. Brands and
products referenced herein are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.
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Copyright © 2000 - 2008 Data Connection.
MetaSwitch is a registered trademark of Data Connection.
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