Charter sets St. Louis VoIP trial

(Telephony) Charter Communications will use Nortel Networks, Arris Interactive and Antec as equipment vendors for its second voice-over-IP trial, to run in 500 homes in St. Louis starting next year.

The 6.3-million sub MSO last summer announced a Central Wisconsin-based trial with Cisco Systems, Telcordia and Motorola.

"We'll be continuing that to a Level 2 test to run parallel with the Nortel test in St. Louis," explained John Pietri, Charter's senior engineering vice president.

Pietri said that the St. Louis trial will be conducted among "friendlies, but more than just employees" and will be used to determine which system should ultimately be used when the MSO rolls out end-to-end IP services starting in late 2001 or early 2002.

"We're doing an IP service that rides over the DOCSIS platform. There won't be any marketing trials associated with this other than testing the acceptance by the people we use in the trial," he explained.

Dan Middleton, vice president of Local Internet for Nortel said that the trial would resolve "operational issues" and give Charter a chance to understand how telephony services work.

"It's not really so much a technology test," he said. "I think they feel comfortable with what Nortel can deliver in that regard."