Primus Canada picks Telica softswitch for VoIP rollout

Telica said it has won a contract to provide Primus Telecommunications Canada with its Plexus 9000 softswitches.

Primus Canada, which is a subsidiary of Primus Telecommunications Group in McLean, Va., is launching voice-over-IP service in several Canadian cities as part of a service bundle that includes broadband access. The service will include a number of Class 5 features and enhancements including visual call waiting, five-way calling, do-not-disturb, caller ID block, alternate number and speed dial.

"It’s the first consumer VoIP installation for us," said Jim Lane, vice president of marketing for Telica, noting that the company has done several deployments that were focused on enterprise services.

As part of the service launch, Primus already has installed one 9000 switch in Toronto and is preparing a second in Vancouver. One of the keys to winning the contract, according to Telica, was the ability to handle a national deployment with very few switches.

"We scale to 20,000 trunks, which if you’re using normal over subscription number is 100,000 customers," said Lane. "We’re dealing with IP access on a class five switch. It doesn’t matter if the loop is just around metro Toronto or if it extends all the way to Vancouver. We don’t care where the person lives."