Feb 28, 2005 12:00 PM,

HARGRAY DEPLOYS INTEGRA5'S UNITV PRODUCT

By Vince Vittore

Integra5 Communications will announce this week that Hargray Communications has deployed its UniTV Visual Telephony product as part of the carrier's TV Caller ID service.

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Hargray, an incumbent telco serving southeastern South Carolina and parts of Georgia, is offering the service to subscribers of its digital cable and telephony services.

Hargray, which launched the service last week, is deploying the service by placing an Integra5 UniTV triple-play server platform in its headend. The server can take incoming call information from either a Class 5 circuit switch or a softswitch, regardless of the calling device. That data is then formatted for TV display and sent over the access network using IP transport.

“The current installations we have are dual-mode, where they're sending messaging to traditional set-top boxes and IP set-top boxes,” said Eyal Bartfeld, president and CEO of Integra5.

The launch at Hargray is Integra5's second publicly announced telco customer. In June 2004, the company said Comporium had launched a similar service.

And while caller ID via TV has been around for some time, previous solutions have relied largely on hardware, according to Meredith Flynn-Ripley, executive consultant of sales and marketing, for Integra5. By moving to a software-based solution, the service can do much more than display just name and number. Among the potential enhancements are picture ID, active voice mail — where users can visually manage their message via TV — and management functions such as call screening. The company also is working on improving processing speed so that caller ID can be displayed before the user's phone even rings.

“We're not trying to invent new applications,” Bartfeld said. “We're taking existing applications and bringing them to the television domain.”

Comporium and Hargray are offering the service as part of service bundles, but according to a survey of 130 users conducted by Integra5, 80% would pay a couple of dollars per month for TV Caller ID. Additionally, 60% had shown the service to friends and neighbors.