Covering all bases: Westell signs trio of partnerships

Striving to bring combined voice and data over digital subscriber line service to small enterprises, Westell Inc. announced interoperability partnerships last week with three voice-over-DSL gateway vendors.

New partners TollBridge Technol-ogies, Jetstream Communications and CopperCom Inc. have "clearly captured the space" in the voice-over-DSL market, said Ben Rabinowitz, senior product manager for Westell. "As the market plays out, it's going to be important to interoperate with all three and see which will be the most successful," he said.

The agreements support Westell's communications portal, or integrated access device, which offers users voice, high-speed data and fax over a single copper loop, said Bruce Albelda, regional sales vice president for Westell. The portal can be located on the customer premises and integrated into the current network.

The service is aimed at businesses with five to 20 workers and should appeal to a spectrum of carriers. Competitive local exchange carriers will profit because they can buy a single loop, incumbent carriers can benefit because they won't have to use their physical plants and business users will get a combination of voice and data services from a single provider, Albelda said.

Westell will target approximately 3 million existing small businesses in the United States. "These businesses are really good candidates," Albelda said. "They are people who want voice and data but don't want hassle."

The portal allows customers to put all traffic on one unbundled loop, and allows on-site provisioning, Rabinowitz said.

Westell's portal also uses a compression technique for asymmetrical DSL, which allows service providers to offer ADSL to small businesses without compromising the quality of voice service - despite ADSL's upstream bandwidth limitations, he said.

Westell's shotgun marketing approach will be aided by the new partners - all of which have different strategies. TollBridge is currently focusing on incumbent LEC opportunities, trying to devise a compression algorithm that will allow Westell to serve small businesses and consider the upstream limitations of ADSL. CopperCom and Jetstream, meanwhile, have strong CLEC plays, he said.

"We're excited about working with all three. The market's big enough for all three to succeed," Rabinowitz added.

Ken Kolderup, director of marketing for Jetstream, said his company saw two primary benefits of the partnership. First, more DSL access multiplexer (DSLAM) interoperability means more carriers will be able to use Jetstream's gateway to deliver voice over DSL. And an integrated access device means carriers have more choice in selecting or finding customer premises equipment to meet their customers' needs, he added.