Montanans quick to discover value in more buried treasure

Montana's incumbent carriers have pushed broadband capabilities to the edges of their networks, often reaching nearly one hundred percent of their business and residential customers

 

28th Annual MTA Showcase, Billings, MONTANA, December 2, 2009 — With an abundance of natural resources, Montana has always been known as the Treasure State. And judging by the investments being made by an active community of regional local exchange carriers, Montanans will continue to benefit from a new form of in-ground assets: fiber optics. With more than 9,000 miles of fiber optics already installed, Montana's incumbent carriers have pushed broadband capabilities to the edges of their networks, often reaching nearly one hundred percent of their business and residential customers. Complementing this high speed infrastructure are products from Metaswitch Networks that are being used to help deliver a comprehensive range of broadband telephony applications.

Both Range Telephone Cooperative and 3 Rivers Communications have recently teamed up with Metaswitch. With over 1,000 miles of fiber, connecting nearly all of the Range family's 39 exchanges, plus current and future builds to homes and businesses in those areas, Range was well suited to deliver Metaswitch's sophisticated telephony applications to over 28,000 subscribers throughout southeastern Montana and Wyoming. 3 Rivers Communications will replace its legacy Nortel equipment with a Metaswitch solution to power its core network infrastructure.

The need for a scalable, reliable and highly-featured voice over IP platform drove Ron Warnick, the director of technology and network operations for 3 Rivers Communications, to take a closer look at Metaswitch. "Not only can we start to replace our legacy switching equipment, but their MetaSphere platform also allows us to cost-effectively deliver a staggering range of business and residential services to our customers. These applications and services are usually only found in large metropolitan areas."

Metaswitch's distributed switching architecture was an important factor for the Range family once it came time to choose a vendor. According to chief technology officer, Tim Green, "The Metaswitch distributed architecture will allow Range to collapse three independent legacy networks into a single corporate switching network allowing for an easy transition from its current host-remote scenario to a next generation switching architecture."

This is no small feat in Big Sky Country. America's fourth largest state, Montana ranks only 44th by population, with average customer density less than three access lines per mile. The impressive broadband penetration across such a challenging geography has been achieved before any stimulus funding, further highlighting a keen focus on cost-effective deployments with long term viability. It seems as though Metaswitch meets those requirements regularly. Citing over 200 independent operating companies as customers, Metaswitch is helping a large portion of the rural telecom community reduce costs in the central office while providing their customers with the most advanced telephony applications.

About Metaswitch Networks

Metaswitch Networks is a leading provider of carrier systems and software solutions that are powering the migration of communications networks to open, packet-based architectures. Hundreds of network operators worldwide depend on its Carrier Systems Division for reliable, scalable session control, media gateway and application/feature server solutions to enable compelling revenue-generating services. Its Network Protocols Division develops high performance, portable software components that are integrated into the products of the world's leading communications equipment manufacturers. For more information, please visit www.metaswitch.com.