Clarent Offers Final VoIP Network Piece

(Telephony) Clarent has completed its broadband voice-over-IP offering with the introduction of its OpenAccess last-mile solution.

"Local access is the last step to move voice-over-IP from the core all the way to the edge," said Daniel Fung, president of Clarent's local access division.

He said the new product line builds on Clarent's previous efforts in building core and outer layer VoIP gateways designed for large carriers and voice clearinghouse customers who are migrating from traditional circuit switches to VoIP softswitch technology.

"Now we can extend the voice-over-IP network all the way to the edge. Every single broadband subscriber is my prospective customer," said Fung, who defined broadband as speeds over 128 Kb/s and customers as "residential, SOHO or local market" telephony users.

"Our last mile solution works independent of the network type," he said. "It really doesn't matter if it's copper or cable or [fixed] wireless or DSL."

The main network components are a softswitch that combines the call manager and command center elements of the network and a customer premise gateway that connects users to the network.

"Then we leverage our carrier and business enterprise units to offer the scalable trunking gateways that can allow the broadband service providers to interface either back to the PBXs for their business customers or to the PSTN," he said.

The local access offering, he added, provides 13 supplemental services that residential customers typically receive from traditional circuit-switched telephony services that are integrated into the core manager.

CPE costs range from $150 to $350 depending on what services the provider wishes to offer, including integrating a modem into the on-site device.

"The customer premise gateway will provide the voice encoding and the packetizing and can also provide an interface to customer premise equipment like the telephone, computer, fax machine and modem," he said.

Clarent's last mile system is "available today" and in "over 70 trials worldwide," Fung noted.