ACD.net deploys softswitched VoDSL

(Telephony) For ACD.net, the move to a softswitch-enabled voice-over-DSL system was a no-brainer. The company was already offering DSL services to commercial and residential customers in Michigan and had never bought a traditional switch.

Convergent Networks, which builds an ATM softswitch, seemed to have the right idea, said ACD.net’s president/CEO Kevin Schoen.

“We’re doing everything over ATM. We’re sending the traffic either to the Internet or we’re sending the traffic to the Convergent switch,” Schoen said. “The nice thing about the Convergent box is it’s straight ATM. Most people’s DSLAMs are straight ATM, so it’s easy to mesh the networks and make it a drop-in solution rather than a major engineering task.”

ACD.net is also a traditional ISP and, in the next several months, expects to set up “a few customers for voice-over-ATM on our DSL network,” Schoen continued.

Convergent’s switch strategy is migratory. It will start as ATM then add IP support later in the year. That suits ACD.net, said Schoen.

“We worked with some other companies in the past. From the technological standpoint … what we have seen is Convergent is further ahead than other companies,” he said.

ACD.net is using Paradyne’s proprietary technology on its DSLAMs and can reach 30,000-plus feet from a C.O. on “very low quality copper,” Schoen said.

“We can go where people can’t, so when we go into a business [customer] that has 15 locations, we can get all 15 of them where another DSL guy can get 10 or 11 of them,” he added.

ACD.net has gained 480 customers with a 60:40 commercial/residential ratio since turning on its DSL network in November. Schoen credits the sub sign-ups with ACD.net’s local touch.

“We’re not a huge operation, so we’ve been able to do that local focus effectively,” he said. “Our focus is to stay high density and tightly focused. We’re not going to all of a sudden go to Iowa. We’re going to stay strictly in Michigan.”

Voice is an important addendum to the high-speed data business.

“The way for us to increase our revenue generation per C.O. is to do things other than just DSL,” he agreed.

And voice without the cost of a Class 5 switch is just too attractive to pass up.

“When we look at the numbers, we obviously don’t want to get into things that we can’t handle,” he noted. “Voice services over ATM are just another layer on top of that.”