VON: CopperCom’s capture of IOCs continues

BOSTON--With a range of solutions and deployment scenarios from switch replacement and cap-and-grow scenarios to customer care and voicemail, CopperCom announced this week it has racked up four more independent operating company customers.

Northeast Nebraska Telephone Co., S&A Telephone Co. in Kansas, Swayzee Telephone Co. in Indiana and Ontario and Trumansburg Telephone Companies have purchased and are rolling out CopperCom’s Converged Switching eXchange (CSX.)

“We are heavily focused on the IOC market and will continue to be market focused there going forward,” said Julian Thomson, president and CEO of CopperCom.

Thomson took over as CEO upon the retirement in August of Mike Myers. Thomson had been chief operating officer and also served as head of business development, product management and R&D in preparing for this role since joining the company in 2001.

Northeast Nebraska, located in Jackson Neb., will cap its legacy switching system and grow its base using CopperCom’s CSX. It also will use CopperCom’s Switchmaxx Unified Self-Care Web portal and Voicemaxx Web-enabled voicemail service.

CopperCom acquired Switchmaxx from Phonetics LC in April of this year. The IOC has 7100 access lines across 26 communities in rural Nebraska to whom it will be able to offer VoIP, IPTV and other IP-based services using the CSX. Customers will be able to shop for, buy and manage their services through the Switchmaxx Web portal.

Ontario and Trumansburg Telephone Companies in the State of New York, on the other hand, have already completed the first stage of their deployment of the CopperCom CSX. The companies will deploy two softswitches in order to roll out VoIP, broadband data, video and aggregated long distance and fend off cable competition and extend service beyond their traditional service areas.

Ontario and Trumansburg Telephone Companies are jointly owned and operated independent telephone providers serving approximately 11,000 customers in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York.

S&A Telephone will deploy a the CSX as part of a major system upgrade of its aging systems that serve customers across the communities of Allen, Admire and Scranton, Kansas.

The legacy switching system at Swayzee Telephone is now history. The company replaced it with CopperCom’s CSX when it discovered its existing switch would no longer be supported.

“We see ourselves as a the transition company. We do switch replacements. We’re not there to sit next to a Class 5 for 10 years,” Thomson said.

The 103-year-old Swayzee Telephone serves approximately 1100 customers with voice service, DSL, wireless Internet, cable TV and DSS satellite service.