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> Broadband Gear Report's VoIP Alert for August 15, 2005

Up Front

The Cure for the VoIP Summertime Blues

It was the last thing anyone involved in VoIP wanted to hear from the FCC in late July: "All providers of interconnected VoIP service must specifically advise every new and existing subscriber, prominently and in plain language, of the circumstances under which E911 service may not be available through the interconnected VoIP service or may be in some way limited by comparison to traditional E911 service."

The rub? If you don't get documentation from each and every one of your IP telephony subs that they understand the limitations, you have to disconnect the undocumented ones — by Aug. 30.

Isn't this summertime when the living is easy? Aren't a lot of your subs on vacation, and going to be hard to reach, never mind get a "documented" response from? Aren't a lot of cable system employees taking a little R&R as well? While do-able, the FCC mandate is a prodigious task, and it isn't the kind of thing you want to have to pull off semi-staffed.

Drama and dread quickly spread across Cableland. But after a few days, the mood mellowed as cable ops switched to true can-do mode. MSOs fired up interactive voice responses (IVRs), direct mail and email alerts basically telling subs this: E911 collapse can occur, especially during a power outage. Put in simple technical terms, if subs don't have a battery backup in the E-MTA and the power goes, they won't have E911. And of course, even if subs do have the battery in the EMTA, it will eventually die as well.

After some hand wringing, it looks like the mentality has shifted to nose-to-the-grindstoning. Time Warner Cable even told the FCC that although it believed it had already complied with the Commission's E911 sub notification and acknowledgement regs during sale or installation of VoIP services, it was taking its vigilance even further. TWC will remind all its IP subs via mail about E911 limits, and include an FCC-required sticker during the next few weeks.

In the Know

VoIP and Commercial Services: Learn from the Past as the New Net Is Born

VoIP and commercial services are two of the hottest engineering topics in broadband cable technology today, but you usually don't to see them mentioned as one blazing potential — yet. MSOs are tending to focus on residential IP telephony, and many commercial services rollouts are spotlighting data alone.

Last week, we chatted with Whaleback Systems Founder and VP of Engineering Wray West about how the technical community will combine the two opportunities. West, former SVP of engineering for Cedar Point Communications, was also the founder and CTO of Indus River Networks, a developer of managed remote networking solutions.

Whaleback Systems rolled out a business phone solution for small and medium businesses (SMBs) at this year's SCTE Cable-Tec Expo. The solution, unlike complex PBX systems, is said to significantly reduce monthly telephone access and long distance expenses, and can seamlessly integrate with IT networks to simplify system management. Whaleback also reports that it improves employee productivity by automating processes and streamlining communications among office, mobile, and remote employees. The solution also has "linear expandability and a multitude of advanced features" according to Whaleback.

If you'd like to contact Wray, email wray@whalebacksystems.com.

BGR: When you sit down with cable engineers to discuss the potentials of VoIP for business customers, what's their biggest technical concern?

Wrest: Most often these concerns focus around how a business phone service will be installed and supported. Many of the people we have talked with have been involved in a business service rollout, and they have a great respect for the amount of support a business can require. Some operators have responded by building up strong business customer support organizations. These teams are typically preparing to add voice services to their repertoire and have subject matter experts on hand and are growing more to deal with business voice services.

The majority of the operators we talk with are more interested in developing partnerships with existing specialists in business customer support. In this model, the operator provides reliable access bandwidth and reliable PSTN connectivity and they work hand in hand with a local IT or telephony business supplier to deal with the customer premise support and operation. This permits a high margin additional revenue source to be tapped while leveraging the organization expertise that is already in place.

Whaleback's ORCA system was developed to be installed and operated with utmost simplicity and with little specialized knowledge. This resonates with both groups.

BGR: Whaleback debuted at SCTE's Expo this June, and you stressed that your company's solutions were designed specifically for broadband cable. What exactly does that mean from an engineering standpoint?

Wrest: VoIP has generated a great deal of traction in the business market. However, if you look at the products that are available, they are all legacy PBX products or systems that were designed for VoIP on the subscriber side, but fall back to traditional circuit trunks for PSTN connectivity. Even if VoIP is offered for PSTN connections, it was done as an after thought of the architecture. Whaleback's ORCA was built from the ground up to embrace VoIP on all connections. The system is natively VoIP to the stations, the PSTN, and all the service functions in the middle.

From an engineering standpoint this means there are no tradeoffs in the systems that were built in to support legacy architectures. The system is able to fully leverage all of the advantages of VoIP. These advantages include the ability to network sites, attach remote workers, and to converge voice and data on the access lines. All of these reduce customer costs and create a seamless communication environment.

BGR: What were engineers from the operator side of cable asking you about most at Expo this year?

Wrest: Most of them wanted to know when they could have the product to start meeting the demands of their business customers. Many of the engineers had been involved in the evaluations of other products and come to the same conclusions that I mentioned before about products not really targeting VoIP PSTN connections. Their business customers want service from them and they want to offer them a good solution.

BGR: What's your vision for cable in the commercial voice service space over the next couple years? What should the engineering community be doing now to ensure success in the space?

Wrest: The migration to VoIP has had a profound effect on the telecommunications industry as it has progressed from the long distance market, to the local exchange, and now to the business. This change enables a cost structure that is far lower than traditional products while bringing converged communication, reduced maintenance costs, and a broad choice of services. However, this youthful technology lacks the maturity of the traditional communications network. Security and privacy issues like viruses, spam and other undesirable behavior that have impacted Web browsers and e-mail can find a home in this new medium, unless caution is carefully exercised.

The engineering community needs to be cautious in how easily it opens natural barriers in the desire for new functions and rapid growth. Keeping communication elements separate with strong authentication between players is required to create a VoIP network that has the reliability and security of traditional networks.

Set up boundaries between businesses and the local exchange to enforce security rules. Be wary of too much flexibility or too open of a call model. For example, free routing of calls to over the Internet could be enticing, but if it generated as many spam phone messages as I get on my email account, I would be paralyzed. Engineers need to learn from the past as the new network is born.

BGR: How did your experience at Cedar Point Communications affect how you developed the technology behind Whaleback?

Wrest: At Cedar Point Communications, I ran the deployment service organization and then the product engineering team. I am impressed with the technical capabilities of the MSO community.

There were three items that were important to our success at Cedar Point that Whaleback Systems has embraced. Foremost is a relentless commitment to quality and reliability. This will be even more critical for business customers that rely on their phones for their livelihood. This plays hand in hand with simplicity in all aspects of installation, operation, and maintenance. A complex system is not only more costly to operate; it also is more prone to failure due to the greater opportunity for human error. This gets coupled with a focus on the specific needs of the customers. Businesses want a system the works like they expect, has the features they use, and doesn't have lots of toys to distract or confuse their users.

Gear Watch

Who's Buying What

• Buckeye TeleSystem selected Empirix Inc.'s Hammer XMS monitoring system to support its VoIP service deployments. Buckeye offers voice, data and video services to the Northwest Ohio business market using fiber-optic backbone deployed by a sister company, Buckeye CableSystem. Buckeye TeleSystem's customers range from multi-site Fortune 500 firms to small offices.
• Bresnan Communications is using the ARRIS Touchstone TM402P EMTAs in its phone markets. The EMTA delivers two lines of primary line voice over IP along with high-speed data access, and includes an integrated Lithium-Ion battery backup guaranteeing continued service for up to 16 hours in the case of a power outage. During the second quarter of 2005, ARRIS delivered over 567,000 of the Touchstone TM402 EMTAs to cable operators, which the company says makes it far and away the number one EMTA provider worldwide.
• Cedar Point Communications announced agreements with three Colombian cable system ops for the deployment of Cedar Point's SAFARI C3 media switching system for the delivery of cable telephony services. The agreements provide for the utilization of SAFARI C3 units with TV Cable in Bogotá, with Promisión in Bucamaranga and with Costavision in Cartagena.
• Cable One selected Nortel as its primary VoIP technology and professional services provider. Cable One plans to launch full-featured primary line telephony services in up to 45 markets throughout the midwestern, southern and western United States. "Adding VoIP to the Cable One network is a major initiative," Steve Fox, Cable One VP, digital services and technology, says. "We needed a vendor with extensive deployment, integration and operations experience in the cable market as well as a PacketCable-qualified solution that delivers the unparalleled quality and reliability we demand for our customers. We are confident that Nortel's proven technology, professional services and ability to integrate multi-vendor networks will allow us meet our initial January 2006 goal of rolling out cable telephony service."

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