IN THIS ISSUE
Happy Holidays from the Alameda Office
Welcome to the second edition of Metaswitch eNews! With the year-end upon us, I
imagine that most of you are in a state of chaos with last minute gift buying, visiting
family and friends for the holidays, and wrapping up your year-end to-do list at
the office. Prior to heading out the door for the holidays, I hope that you will
browse through our latest edition of Metaswitch eNews.
This second edition of our online newsletter features a competitive carrier revenue
review from our colleagues at NPRG, provides a closer look at partner equipment
testing, and reflects on what the leading cable companies are doing with voice services.
Please also take a look at our new podcast, glance at how Cisco and Metaswitch have
partnered to deliver you the best in NGN technology, and read our latest case study
featuring TCT.
My hope is that the articles in this newsletter will offer you answers and insight
into Metaswitch technology and business practices. More importantly, I want to stimulate
questions from our readers, catalyzing an ongoing dialogue. Thank you to everybody
who has already provided positive feedback on our first edition - I encourage you
to send more.
Happy reading and Happy Holidays!
Cory
Terrence L. Barnich
President & CEO, NPRG
As we engage in our annual research and analysis of the competitive telecom sector
and its metrics for NPRG's Competitive Carrier Report, we keep a keen eye fixed
for clues to trends that may define larger industry movement. Our recent revenue
review has yielded, we think, a few important directional insights. Overall sector
revenue growth lately has remained relatively flat; our last Competitive Carrier
Report, Vol. 20 (2005), showed 2004-2005 total revenues dead-even. And our revenue
forecast last year was that it would, in fact, decline slightly. See Table 1, which
illustrates total industry revenue growth over the 2003-2006 (est.) period.
Preliminary actual data available for 2006, however, seem to show some resumption
of growth - a happy occurrence, despite our earlier professional (slight) miscalculation.
However, at a very slow (single digit) rate.
So, we have decided to throw back the covers a bit to see whether there's something
going on we could detect under the overall "low growth" label.
Read more
How A Rural Telco Transformed Itself Into A Competitive IP Communications Company
TCT, formerly known as Tri-County Telephone, is not your typical rural telephone
company. When we first met with TCT almost four years ago, they had already realized,
long before it became apparent to most independent operators, that they had to prepare
for the advent of voice over IP and increasing competition.
Since then, they have taken the steps required to reconfigure their entire organization
from an incumbent telephone company mindset to an entrepreneurial environment that
embraces change and new technologies.
The decommissioning of their Lucent 5ESS was just one symbolic milestone in their
evolution to a total communications provider delivering many different forms of
communications and entertainment services.
Download our recently-published
case study to find out more.
Metaswitch Solutions To Enable Bresnan Communications To Deploy Advanced SIP Based
Services In Four Western States
When Bresnan Communications, the 10th largest cable operator in the United States,
began looking for a flexible softswitch solution that could support a wide range
of business telephone services and applications, they found that they had many vendors
to choose from. But after fully evaluating their needs and the options available
in the softswitch market, they identified Metaswitch as the best fit for their network.
Metaswitch's stellar reputation of customer support, features, scalability and proven
carrier-grade reliability allowed Bresnan to provide a broad range of services to
small and mid-sized business customers. Bresnan plans to leverage its cable infrastructure
to offer carrier-class digital telephone services to business customers in early
2007.
Ronald Gruia, principal telecom analyst at Frost & Sullivan, said of the announcement:
"The Bresnan-MetaSwitch deal is important for the cable market, as it offers
clear evidence both of Metaswitch's entry into the cable space, and also of the
increasing uptake of SIP-based solutions that foreshadow a migration to the PacketCable
2.0 specification."
The deployment shows that cable operators are continuing to adopt strategies to
keep them competitive in the ever-demanding cable space. Business and residential
customers alike are asking for a truly converged service for all of their multimedia
communication needs and cable operators are looking for a way to deliver this quickly,
cost-effectively and with market-leading features.
For more information on the Bresnan-MetaSwitch collaboration, please
click here.
BroadStar Communications and Norlight Telecommunications are among more than 20
competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) that have adopted Metaswitch's Secure
IP Migration Platform for the Local Exchange (SIMPLE) solution, which integrates
IP Next-Generation Networking (IP NGN) technologies from Cisco Systems®.
BroadStar, a leading provider of telephone, cable television and broadband Internet
services in the southeastern United States, worked closely with Metaswitch and Cisco
to architect a scalable triple-play solution for luxury residential properties,
including condominiums.
Norlight's CTO, Michael Ulicki, said: "MetaSwitch is widely recognized as a
technology leader, which was important to Norlight as we looked to the future. More
importantly, several months into service deployment, we can attest to the fact that
the company really stepped up to the plate to ensure a successful implementation."
Read more
By Joel Guy, Proposal Manager
Metaswitch held its annual Engineering Conference at the historic Claremont Resort
and Spa in Berkeley, CA, on October 16-18, 2006. Attendees included consulting engineers
from New Hampshire to Oregon and many states in between.
This invitation-only event gave consulting engineers the opportunity to meet directly
with representatives from Metaswitch's headquarters team to learn more about the
latest Metaswitch technology and services. Metaswitch presenters included senior
architects from the engineering team and executives from product management, customer
support, sales and marketing.
The conference included a variety of technical sessions, new application scenarios,
as well as partner and interoperability updates. The 3-day event was not all work,
however, as there was time for a round of golf or a tour of Muir Woods, plus an
evening out in San Francisco.
We have been busy adding to our "Zen and the Art of Network Transformation"
podcast series. Please take a few minutes to download and listen to the latest edition,
whether from your PC or on your iPod.
The New CLEC
What will it take for service providers to thrive in the coming decade? What business
strategies are they adopting and do new technologies offer opportunities to compete
- or destroy their ability to differentiate? And what regulatory changes are imminent
that will change the ground rules - yet again? These questions, and others, were
the topic at a breakfast panel sponsored by Metaswitch at CompTel Fall in Orlando,
Florida. Metaswitch CEO John Lazar, Cisco's Bill McCarthy, and Remi Communications'
David Malfara's discussion was moderated by Rich Williams of Connect2 Communications.
PodTech.net brings you excerpts from the panel.
By Doug Kreitz
Solutions Director
Before solutions reach our customers, four levels of testing take place to ensure
smooth product performance. Each step of the process is important in assuring that
customer equipment works properly.
The Metaswitch Interoperability Test Group (ITG) is directly involved in several
types of testing. The primary type of testing conducted by the ITG is to test interoperability
between the Metaswitch and other vendor products. For partner products that use
the voice interface of the Metaswitch, we test signaling and call flows from the
Metaswitch to ensure that these systems behave as intended. An example could be
as simple as when the subscriber on phone "A" calls someone on phone "B".
We want to assure that subscriber "A" hears ringing until phone "B"
picks up. Alternatively, testing the products that use the management interface
of the Metaswitch means ensuring that the resultant state matches the intended change
in the user interface of the partner product. For instance, turning up a new subscriber
in a partner Operational Support System (OSS) will result in all of the required
parameters being set on the Metaswitch to enable the subscriber.
A second type of testing is Quality Assurance testing (QA), which involves creating
a set of test cases that push the limits of capacity or exercise all of the capabilities
of a product.
Read more
Congratulations to Fujitsu Network Services for winning the International Engineering
Consortium's Infovision Award at the recent Broadband World Forum conference!
Although best known as an equipment manufacturer, Fujitsu also operates a state-of-the-art
VoIP network based on Metaswitch's softswitch and media gateway technology. Their
Managed VoIP Network was one of Europe's first hosted solutions for large corporate
and public sector enterprises, and was recognized by the IEC in the Network &
Services Management & Operations category.
Read more