Nortel extends Charter agreement, partners with Nuera

Nortel Networks expanded its two-year softswitch relationship with Charter Communications today, announcing at NCTA in New Orleans that the MSO will deploy its Succession platform in its Midwest and Great Lakes operating divisions.

Nortel also signed a strategic agreement with Nuera Communications to integrate its voice-over-IP gateways into Nortel’s PacketCable platform. The agreement gives Nortel a new avenue to sell to cable providers using the PacketCable 1.0 standards to deploy SIP-based applications. Nortel will now be able to bring its whole host of IP services to the MSOs using TGCP, the trunking protocols most MSOs are deploying over.

“Nuera is very popular with MSOs,” said Elaine Smiles, vice president of cable marketing for Nortel. “We’re finding most cable operators are choosing Nuera gateways and then selecting their softswitch vendor.”

Nortel’s Charter deal extends upon on one of the oldest softswitching relationships in the industry: Charter was the first cable provider to deploy VoIP commercially in 2002, using Nortel gear. Charter then deployed one of Nortel’s Succession softswitches in St. Louis and deployed gateways throughout Wisconsin for its initial commercial trial.

Now with thousands of lines in service, Charter is expanding the service in the upper Midwest, deploying a new Succession compact softswitch (Nortel’s softswitch in a standardized Motorola chassis) and has announced plans for a trial later this year of Nortel’s media application server, the Multimedia Communication Server 5200. The server allows for SIP-based enhanced features including video calling, presence applications and mobility features.