Convergent pushing into PacketCable space

Sensing a move on the part of cable operators to finally develop and deploy IP telephony, Convergent Networks has plunged in with a PacketCable-compliant platform that addresses multiple voice applications, including Class 4 and 5 telephony services.

“The cable opportunity is there because the MSOs have booth the opportunity and the motivation to go after this technology,” said Carl Baptiste, Convergent’s managing director of marketing.

Those MSOs, he said, are looking at Convergent’s offerings, although he was wont to say who, exactly, was doing the looking.

“Our hands are tied,” he said. “There are MSOs that are selecting vendors and taking the product and negotiating the contract today. You’re going to see meaningful PacketCable trials in the middle of next year and real deployment ramps are going to happen in 2004.”

When they happen, Convergent hopes to be on the front lines providing service. The company has become a player in CableLabs’ interoperability specification-setting efforts because it likes the look of cable and hopes to transfer its PSTN expertise into that space, Baptiste said.

“They [cable networks] don’t have any connectivity roadblocks,” he said. “The satellite guys are going to have a hard time doing VoIP because of the delay. The RBOCs can’t do video because they have distance limits in high-speed DSL. These [cable] guys are uniquely positioned to deploy packet voice and then actually take advantage of the advanced applications you can build going forward. They’re important for a soft switch company to focus on and they are our key focus.”

Part of that focus, he said, is interoperating with other vendors, particularly those with media terminal adapters [MTAs], the residential and commercial end points. Another focus is on developing IP Centrex features because, he said, every cable request for proposal [RFP] comes loaded with that demand.

Reliability, he emphasized, is essential.

“The cable market is not second line. It’s pretty clear from the cable MSOs that the demand they’re getting is as a primary line service. You have to have the characteristics to deliver it,” he said.

Baptiste admitted that VoIP has been on cable’s drawing boards for a while and that the PacketCable process is more onerous than originally conceived. The industry also was slowed by its own success in constant bit rate [CBR] switched services, he said.

“They found they could make money and they focused on getting that ready. Now they’re moving to packet,” he said.

And Convergent is moving with them.

“The thing we bring to the market is our PSTN deployment experience,” he said. “Since we’re so well interconnected already in the market and have the deployment experience and our customer base, we can certainly reduce the risk of that interconnectivity as we bring these networks into deployment. We bring forward all the packet telephony benefits into this market.”