Valley TeleCom Initiates Milestone Circuit-to-Packet Total Network Migration with MetaSwitch

Willcox, AZ: November 8, 2005. Valley TeleCom Group, comprising four companies serving subscribers across southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico, today announced that it is deploying 15 softswitches from MetaSwitch with the aim of migrating its entire network to packet-based switching over the next 12 months. According to independent industry experts, the multi-million dollar initiative is one of the most significant wholesale next generation Class 5 switch replacements to date of any North American incumbent operator's network.

"Although early adopters such as Sprint and Verizon have committed to widescale softswitch deployment, Valley TeleCom may be one of the only U.S. carriers to have actually replaced every single legacy switch in its networks to support both local and long-distance services," commented Teresa Mastrangelo, Principal Analyst with broadbandtrends, an independent market research and consulting firm specializing in the coverage of broadband infrastructure and services, including Class 5 switch deployments in North America. "Valley's adoption of MetaSwitch therefore represents a watershed moment in the industry's acceptance of next generation switching technology, reflecting a trend for carriers to replace their entire networks at once rather than a switch at a time."

Valley TeleCom Group operates 13 exchanges in Arizona and New Mexico through its subsidiaries, Valley Telephone Cooperative and Copper Valley Telephone. In addition, its CLEC subsidiary, Valley Connections, plans to open another two exchanges in the coming months. The company decided to migrate its network to a packet-based softswitch in order to reduce the cost of network operations, and to prepare for growth in Voice-over IP (VoIP) and Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) services. The project is expected to pay for itself within 18 months through network efficiencies, revenues from new services, and the avoidance of maintenance and upgrade fees on the decommissioned legacy switches.

"We realized that, with the advent of next generation technologies, our aging - and costly - Nortel DMS-10s had only a limited useful lifespan," explained Joe Webb, Valley TeleCom Chief Operating Officer, Plant Administration. "After evaluating many companies and products in depth, our strategic planning team unanimously agreed that MetaSwitch was the only vendor that could actually support replacing our legacy switches while giving us the next-generation architecture and the enhanced services that we required for the future. This decision has been supported by our wholly positive experience during the implementation of our first five switches over the last two months."

Within the Valley TeleCom network, the 15 new MetaSwitches will eventually deliver voice services over an all-IP access network including Occam Networks broadband loop carriers and Wave7 FTTH equipment. To enable a smooth migration, the deployment plans include a transition period during which both TDM and VoIP access and trunking protocols will be used. MetaSwitch's support for a wide range of legacy and packet signaling protocols over a unique single-blade universal gateway card design ensures that no software or hardware need be upgraded or replaced as traffic steadily shifts from TDM to IP.

"MetaSwitch has steadily built up a strong reputation for delivering reliable Class 5 capabilities, enhanced packet-based services, and an award-winning IMS-ready softswitch that provides a future-proof architecture bridging the gap between legacy and next-generation voice," said Mike Ward, Senior Vice President of Sales at MetaSwitch. "We are extremely pleased to be selected as Valley TeleCom's partner for such an important project and look forward to supporting their legacy switch replacement and enabling the enhanced VoIP requirements and features that will fuel their future growth."

About Valley TeleCom Group

Valley TeleCom Group comprises four companies serving over 9,500 subscribers in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. The Group includes Valley Telephone Cooperative, established in 1962, and Copper Valley Telephone, purchased in 1995 from U.S. West. Valley TeleCom offers an array of services including landline telephone, dial-up Internet, high speed DSL and wireless Internet, premium television, and business systems, in addition to wholesale carrier services based on its state-of-the-art OC192 fiber network that extends from Tucson, Arizona to El Paso, Texas.

About MetaSwitch

MetaSwitch is an industry-leading vendor of IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) 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 legacy Class 4/5 capabilities and hosted unified communications services, and scales 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 established telecom technology provider Data Connection. The company is consistently profitable and privately held, with main US offices in California and Virginia, and European headquarters in London, UK.

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.