In The News 2012

Datavo, a competitive local exchange carrier operating in Southern California, is the first announced user of the Metaswitch Networks “Accession Communicator” platform, which turns a hosted solution into a mobile solution.  The way Datavo sells the new capabilities illustrates quite a lot about how small business customers understand value, and how little they understand industry jargon. So part of the sales effort requires starting with concepts they already understand, and building from there. 

“We are delighted that AdvaTel has continued to work closely with Metaswitch to ensure their products remain accredited with our current product line, ensuring a continued quality of support to our customers,” said Martin Price, Director of Business Development, Metaswitch. “Outlook calendar mining gives operators the opportunity to significantly improve levels of service provided to callers.”

The Optical Internetworking Forum approved three security implementation agreements (IAs) and elected several new directors and committee chairs.  Newly elected to the board of directors is Joe Whitehouse of Metaswitch Networks, who will serve a one-year term as the Market Awareness & Education co-chair, Networking.

"Today is yet another significant step forward as we advance our multi-year 'tuck-in' acquisition strategy designed to build customer density throughout our 38-state footprint," said Vincent M. Oddo, Birch president and CEO. "Through this acquisition, Birch continues its recent expansion into southwest Florida. DayStar's Metaswitch-based facilities network, and many thousands of business customers, fit very well into our growing facilities-based enterprise."

“SyncGlobal invested in the TransNexus solution for least cost routing with QOS through the Metaswitch, fraud detection, implementing multiple expanded local calling area products, managing customer specific rated toll products, the ability to analyze near real time customer specific margins on intrastate, interstate, international, and toll free services, and as an application for auditing carrier related toll charges,” said Kyle Williamson, CEO of SyncGlobal.

Metaswitch held its annual customer forum this week with a theme of innovation. That's quite a common theme in the telecom industry these days and like many suppliers of technology to the carrier space, Metaswitch has a vested interest in its customers taking the theme to heart. Metaswitch VP of Marketing Steve Gleave, whose fingerprints are always all over the forum event, summed up the theme early on by urging Metaswitch's carrier customers to get moving. The time for talk about technology and all of its wonderful inventive possibilities has passed, urged Gleave.

Joe Harding, senior vice president of marketing at Integra Telecom, said in a release announcing the service that "[t]his offering allows businesses to focus on their growth and day-to-day priorities, leaving network support and management in the hands of one trusted provider."  Delivered through its partnership with softswitch vendor Metaswitch Networks, Hosted Voice Service is applicable to both single-site and the multi-site medium and large businesses that Integra has begun to target more aggressively over the past two years.

Now that he's back, the former software engineer is describing Metaswitch as a "software company." He's not just trying to sound hip. His four-part strategy provides a glimpse into a company that is helping its customers modernize their networks, while giving them a reasonable path to provide revenue-generating services that businesses and consumers want, over IP networks.

“Integra is a fine example of a service provider that truly values the customer and is gaining the rewards from its commitment to expansion of a comprehensive communications portfolio," said John Lazar, CEO at Metaswitch. "We stand ready to carry out our part in an exciting team that will deliver innovative, readily available services to business customers.”

Integra’s deployment of its new softswitch platform – provided by Metaswitch Networks – opens a number of opportunities for it to pursue. While the company is a regionally-focused carrier based in the Northwest US, it is pushing to extend its reach beyond these confines. Regional carriers have found it challenging to win multi-location enterprise accounts without nationwide reach. Integra’s newly installed Hosted VoIP platform allows it to plug this hole on the voice side and begins to set the stage for the company to move further up-market.

Provider of VoIP Phone and IP communication solutions, Yealink has announced a partner certification for interoperability of the T2X series SIP Phone with the Metaswitch platform, a recognition that signals admission into Metaswitch Networks’ Mosaic Partner Program.  The SIP-T2X Series offers customers high-definition voice quality. Equipped with TI TITAN chipset, it features TI voice engine, HD handset, HD speaker and HD codec (G.722).

John Lazar, Metaswitch Networks CEO, faces a challenge most suppliers to the global telecom business also face, namely how his own business, and that of his service provider customers, will change over the next decade or so. Some of those changes, such as a blurring of “over the top” and “carrier services,” will cause some potential discomfort. 

Edgewater Networks and Metaswitch got together and announced today a new solution geared toward the enterprise VoIP provider market. The new solution takes Metaswitch's MetaView solution and couples it with Edgewater's VoIP installation and monitoring solution, creating a whole new solution that allows providers an easy way to support enterprise operations where different devices from different manufacturers are used on the same network.

"Visual Voicemail is one of a suite of subscriber-facing applications that ETI has developed with technology companies such as Metaswitch," said Frank Gine, President of ETI Software Solutions. "These types of enhanced on-screen applications are a growing part of ETI's product universe and proof that our company has moved beyond provisioning."

Traditional PBXs are on the way out, says Metaswitch Networks. But while they may soon be gone, the company says it wants to make sure they’re not forgotten.  So Metaswitch has launched the website www.rememberwhenpbx.com,  which discusses the demise of the classic PBX and invites folks to submit photos and memories of these warhorses.

Blind cyclist Chris Mairs is to use pedal power to travel from Land's End to John O'Groats and hopes to raise £100,000 for Fight For Sight to fund an Oxford University researcher's scholarship to America.  Chris, 55, will join friend Guy Simpson, 45, on a tandem bike for the 1,000-mile journey to support the charity's work funding research to prevent sight loss and treat eye disease.

This week, Metaswitch Networks is taking the wraps off its hosted business social campaign and has given TMCnet exclusive access to this infographic, which emphasizes the key role that mobility is playing in businesses’ move to IP communications.

“People are moving to IP telephony because of its ability to extend mobility services,” says Simon Dredge, director of technical marketing at Metaswitch, who notes that today’s workforce is very mobile and there’s a new expectation that employees be reachable at all times.

While it is impossible to predict the future, two things are certain:; 1) the majority of business customers are still using legacy TDM trunking to connect to the public network, 2) the vast majority of business customers understand the value proposition and plan to move to SIP trunking in the next 5 years.

Farmside, a subsidiary of Bay City Communications has chosen Metaswitch Networks to address the increasing demand for speedier and more sophisticated communications. With Metaswitch solution deployed into its network, the teleco said that the solution cost-effectively provides their customers with enhanced communication applications on both IP and TDM connections.

Erik Linask talks with Chris Carabello, Director of Marketing, about keeping up at the Cable Show.

Freestyle soccer world record holder Daniel Cutting strikes a pose at the Metaswitch booth.

At the Cable Show in Boston, Metaswitch Networks will showcase its Accession Immersive Multimedia Telephony (IMT), which is designed to enable MSOs to deliver fluid call control between smartphones, fixed lines and tablets.

In conversations with Convergencialatina, Steve Gleave, Marketing VP of the company, has explained that "that line of products was encouraging fixed and mobile operators to strengthen their positions within a context where OTTs and manufacturers of devices obtained more benefits."

Columbus Cloud Voice is offered through partner Metaswitch and is a low cost voice solution for traditional digital landline services. Clients can make VoIP calls, set call rules (ignore specific numbers, forward calls to different phones, send certain calls to voice mail, etc etc), receive voice mails via sms and set up their own automated answer systems.

Are these companies willing to risk further investment in their future, without the aid of federal subsidies, under clouds of regulatory uncertainty and no assurance of seeing a return on that investment? In other words, can rural telcos live in the real world of business? Their major vendors are pushing them in that direction. It's riskier to stand still and not invest, than to push forward and take a chance on the future.

Ken Pyle talks with Steve Gleave, VP of Marketing, about his keynote at IP Possibilities 2012.

Innovative Telephone, the largest telco by subscribers in the Virgin Islands (US), has announced that it has selected Metaswitch Networks to migrate its legacy voice telephony operations on the islands of St Croix, St John and St Thomas to an all-IP solution.

How will mobile operators preserve customers and revenue from threat of over the top service providers (OTT)?  Metaswitch's Simon Williams, SVP Product Management and Marketing, review following mobile network carrier options for competing with OTT providers.

Metaswitch is once again the Platinum Sponsor at IP Possibilities, the leading IP conference sponsored by NTCA and OPASTCO.  Looking ahead to this year's conference, Jane Wigen, Member Relations Manager at NTCA, interviews Steve Gleave, Vice President of Marketing, at NTCA's Annual Meeting in San Diego.  Steve discusses new innovations in the IP voice arena.

Steve Gleave of Metaswitch spoke to Brian Dolby about their football theme at this years Mobile World Congress, as well as some more about what they are up to.

Metaswitch has used a lot of references to kings and monarchs in its buildup to its new multimedia telephony portfolio. Perhaps Mobile World Forum 2011 will be remembered as the coronation for the company's new Accession product line….. Accession is one of the more promising concepts to appear in the IP communications world in a while. It and Metaswitch bear watching over the months to come.

Initially, Metaswitch will offer Accession as a managed service, but the network infrastructure will live within carrier networks. However, down the road the company could offer it to service providers as a cloud-based solution, says Steve Gleave, Metaswitch vice president of Marketing.

Of course, many Metaswitch customers already have at least some of the above-mentioned gear installed in their networks already, so providing customers with the capabilities delivered under the Accession umbrella would be just one more way for them to leverage that infrastructure.

"Early momentum in the battle for customer mindshare has been with the handset vendors and app providers," said Kevin DeNuccio, CEO at Metaswitch. "With Accession, the balance of power swings firmly in favor of the network operator, allowing them to deliver trusted, secure, rich and unique applications around the one true global identity: a telephone number."

“Early momentum in the battle for customer mindshare has been with the handset vendors and app providers,” said Kevin DeNuccio, CEO at Metaswitch. "With Accession, the balance of power swings firmly in favor of the network operator, allowing them to deliver trusted, secure, rich and unique applications around the one true global identity: a telephone number. Accession is very much about timely introduction of these advanced applications – something that we can further accelerate with a managed product offering.”

"Arguments for separating signaling and media functions in a session border controller are well understood.  The commercial benefits of running session border control on COTS platforms are also clear.  Moving the signaling control function into the cloud, and leveraging the economies of generic server platforms and inherent system redundancy is a logical progression.  By detaching SBC licenses from physically deployed platforms, operators can be sure that there are "no SBC licenses left behind" when integrated appliances max out before purchased license limits are reached."

“This was a marquee event for FairPoint to show off its fiber network, and experienced staff … FairPoint performed flawlessly."

“We also saw the future in a Metaswitch that is just 2 feet wide, tall and deep but can handle as many voice customers as several floors of the old switches.”

Honouring excellence and innovation in mobile communications, the GSMA is delighted to announce the nominees for the 2012 Global Mobile Awards!  With a record six hundred - the highest ever number of entries to this year's awards - from across the world and from across the mobile eco-system.

Thrutu from Metaswitch Networks has been shortlisted in the "Most Innovative Mobile App" category.

John Lazar, chairman of Metaswitch, one of the leading communication software companies in the UK, said that Britain's engineering "fraternity" needed to sell itself better to young people. "If you are a bright kid born in Silicon Valley in the US, you end up at Stanford or Berkeley and you aspire to work for Google or Apple or a start-up tech company," he said. "Here in Britain, the brightest graduates feel the force of the City, but they don't feel the pull of engineering.