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Columbus Telephone Upgrades to All-Fiber Network with CopperCom’s CSXBy TED GLANZER
TMCnet Communications and Broadband Columnist
For approximately 100 years, rural telcos enjoyed geographic monopolies, which insulated them from having to compete (read: providing new services and lowering prices) for telephony consumers; they literally were the only game in town.
Within the last few years, however, MSOs, wireless companies and VoIP service provider companies started to rain on the rural telcos' parade by offering less expensive alternatives for data, video, and voice. All of a sudden, rural telcos found themselves in the unfamiliar position of either having to upgrade their networks by replacing their legacy switches in order to offer high-quality, next-generation services, or go the way of the dodo bird.
Enter Boca Raton, Fla.-based CopperCom, Inc. and its Converged Switching eXchange, which is designed to meet the specific requirements of small rural carriers to overhaul their networks.
One such rural telco is Columbus, Kan.-based Columbus Telephone Co., a cooperative that serves 3,400 subscribers in a two-square-mile area. In 2004, the rural telco began upgrading its legacy infrastructure to a new fiber-optic network, rolling out triple play services with a single bill to its subscribers by the end of that year.
According to a statement released on Thursday, the upgrade included the deployment of the CopperCom CSX switching solution, which enabled Columbus Telephone to deliver a full suite of advanced features.
The entire network overhaul will be completed by December 2005.
“We did an engineering review of softswitch vendors and determined that CopperCom not only had the best triple-play platform but the greatest long-term viability as a company,” said general manager Jim Dahmen in a statement. “We’re aggressively working to help attract new businesses to the Columbus area, and this investment in broadband provides yet another example of the advanced communications infrastructure available in Columbus.”
CopperCom appears to be doing quite well in the small telecom space.
Earlier this week, New Hampshire-based CLEC/ISP G4 Communications announced that it deployed CopperCom’s Converged Switching eXchange switch.
For service providers, will video services finally bring about the elusive Holy Grail that is increased average revenue per user (APRU)? What forms of delivery can end-users expect? And what preparations do users agents need to make? To find out, make your best effort to attend the sessions of the IPTV Summit at this fall’s INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, which runs October 24-27, at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
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Ted Glanzer is assistant editor for TMCnet. For more articles by Ted Glanzer, please visit:
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