Nortel, Motorola Team Up For Cable VoIP

Cable operators have been looking to enter the telecommunications arena for a several years but cable telephony products are expensive to deploy. Nortel and Motorola have teamed up to provide a low-cost alternative.

by Jim Wagner of internetnews.com [February 5, 2002]

Nortel Networks and Motorola, Inc. are teaming up to provide a low-cost alternative to expensive cable telephony roll outs, officials announced Monday.

Cable companies like AT&T Broadband, Cox Communications, Comcast, and AOL Time Warner have had cable telephony services on their plate for a couple years now, but only on a limited basis. The problem: adding voice to their data networks requires separate voice-only equipment, which is like adding a second network (voice) over their existing (data) network.

Equipment makers like Nortel have been rushing to manufacture and deploy low-cost alternatives to voice networks before their competition gets a toe-hold in the market. Last week, rival Lucent Technologies announced its own cable VoIP solution: iMerge.

The iMerge Network-based Call Signaling Gateway (NCSG), part of Lucent's Converged Network Solutions portfolio, is targeted at markets currently served by hybrid fiber-coax (HFC) or fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) networks, from which more than 70 million cable subscribers currently receive service. The product is currently deployed or in trials at several major service providers in North America, Lucent said.

With cost of deployment high for most carriers, enter Nortel and Motorola, with their partnership to provide voice over IP (VoIP) solutions. VoIP is a data packet technology, with voice calls going from one computer to another in much the same way as Web pages and e-mails. Cable VoIP is seen as a much cheaper alternative to the analog voice network because cable owners can just plug in inexpensive (compared to Class 5 switches) routers to the existing data network.

Tom Valovic, director of IP telephony at research firm IDC, said cable VoIP is still a fledgling technology and Monday's partnership announcement between two heavyweight manufacturers is good news for the industry.

"Given the early stage of deployment of VoIP equipment in the cable industry, there are substantial benefits to cable operators from agreements such as the one between Nortel Networks and Motorola," he said. "Integrated and interoperable solutions will help speed the deployment of new networks that can support the bundled delivery of voice, data and cable programming and thereby enable cable operators to compete head to head with traditional service providers."

The tandem effort is a good match for the two companies, who have been working on VoIP products together for awhile already.

Nortel will modify the Nortel Networks Succession Communication Server 2000 softswitch with Motorola's data/voice routers to be used as a cable head-end. Motorola's multimedia terminal adapter (MTA) for cable modems will give end users advanced telephone services like caller ID, call waiting and call forwarding.

Both companies will share marketing and sales expenses and will also provide support and consulting services to cable operators.

Bruce Swail, Motorola broadband telephony vice president and general manager, said the Nortel/Motorla combo will be the first all-encompassing VoIP package for cable networks.

"By providing an integrated solution from back office to switch to access network, Motorola and Nortel Networks will be the first to deliver a complete VoIP solution as a commercial product for broadband network operators," he said. "As a result, operators will be able to provide end-to-end VoIP performance and reliability while minimizing deployment risks. At the same time, they will be poised to be among the first to take advantage of the opportunities surrounding emerging converged services."

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