Charter signals VoIP expansion with termination deals

Charter Communications has announced deals with Sprint and Level 3 to provide long-distance and local termination services for its VoIP service, as well as a provisioning contract with Accenture, giving it the last key components necessary for a nationwide deployment of IP telephony.

Charter said it would begin to accelerate its deployment of VoIP from its initial three markets (Madison and Wausau, Wis., and St. Louis) to its nationwide footprint. Charter’s goal is to have 1 million homes passed with packet telephony by the end of the year and service available in all five of its regional divisions, though not in all 37 states it holds franchises.

"We’re expediting our rollout," a Charter spokesman said. "Our plans are much more ambitious with these agreements than they would be without them."

Sprint will provide wholesale long-distance transport services and Level 3 will supply its (3)Voice termination services, each handling a portion of Charter’s long-distance traffic. Level 3 will also provide its (3)Link Private Line services to interconnect Charter’s facilities within markets. Charter will not be using Level 3’s wholesale VoIP switching service though, instead using its own platform of Nortel Networks Succession switches and various vendors’ media servers.

"We choose to align with more than one carrier to maximize the benefits of each agreement on a market-by-market basis and achieve the maximum cost savings and flexibility," said Charter Executive Vice President of Advanced Services Tom Cullen in a statement. "We’ll continue to look at other potential partners in order to further gain critical competitive advantage."

Accenture will fill in the back office link, providing its automated provisioning processes across all of Charter’s new markets. By the end of the second quarter, Charter had 31,000 telephony customers and had passed 327,000 homes with the service.