First Communications Partners with MetaSwitch to Deploy Enhanced Broadband Services over Powerline

Nationwide rollout of in-building BPL voice, video and data services blazes trail for industry

 

Akron, OH: November 28, 2006. First Communications, one of the largest Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLECs) in the Midwest, has recently deployed advanced voice and data services delivered over existing power lines in multi-dwelling/multi-tenant (MDU/MTU) buildings to residential and business customers throughout the United States. These services - including broadband Internet, advanced telephony, video on-demand, smart home and an array of security monitoring offerings - leverage next-generation switching and application solutions provided by MetaSwitch.

The new services, known as FirstSpeed BPL, are provided through medium-voltage electricity circuits with a sophisticated technology known as Broadband over Power Lines (BPL). In-building BPL utilizes the existing electrical infrastructure of a building to disperse high-speed connectivity throughout a building. This state-of-art delivery solution does not require expensive re-wiring of the network, and delivers blazing throughput of up to 20 Mbps, which easily outperforms DSL or cable systems.

The new advanced services are directly related to First Communications decision to move its key switching infrastructure from several large-scale Nortel DMS500 switches to new CA9000 softswitch and MG3510 media gateways from MetaSwitch, said Charles Leedy, Ph.D., Vice President of Network Operations at First Communications.

"The biggest benefit of a BPL network is that we don't have to go through a traditional regional Bell company to provide our customers access to these exciting new services," said Leedy. "MetaSwitch provided us with innovative technology that opened up powerful alternative access, without additional construction, wiring, regulatory or safety issues. For our business customers, this means they can simply and quickly network the enterprise through their building's electrical grid."

"First Communications has demonstrated exceptional vision and industry leadership in combining BPL technology with a flexible softswitch-based services platform," said Andrew Randall, Vice President of Marketing at MetaSwitch. "The benefits of their new infrastructure are three-fold: they have exponentially grown their market reach; they have added a host of revenue-enhancing services; and they are providing customers with considerable additional value. It is enormously satisfying to see MetaSwitch solutions driving the adoption of new technologies and enabling the competitive telecommunications sector to thrive through innovation."

About First Communications

First Communications is a full-service telecommunications company that has served Ohio and a national customer base for over 20 years. First Communications offers its customers state-of-the-art technologies coupled with first-rate customer care. First Communications offers local and long-distance phone packages and cellular service to residential customers and local and long-distance phone packages, cellular service, high-speed Internet access and data services to business consumers. First Communications, headquartered in Akron, is located at 3340 West Market Street and on the web at www.firstcomm.com.

About MetaSwitch

MetaSwitch, a division of Data Connection, 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 enhanced services, and scales from a few hundred to millions of subscribers in both integrated and distributed configurations. MetaSwitch customers include Tier 1 carriers and major regional competitive local exchange carriers, as well as operators of broadband wireless, cable and fiber networks. For more information: www.metaswitch.com.