CopperCom enhances VOB devices

(Telephony) CopperCom has introduced a voice over broadband [VoB] technology that integrates communications protocols to seamlessly and remotely manage integrated access devices [IADs] from a central management station.

This will allow service providers to deploy a wide range of different IADs for small business and residential markets that comply with the ATM Forum Loop Emulation Services [LES] Embedded Operations Channel [EOC].

“We believe we’ve brought to market this capability before anybody else – the ability for our gateway to talk to any other vendor’s IAD that complies with the standard. Obviously our own IADs do that as well,” said Neil Griffiths, CopperCom’s voice-over-broadband product marketing director.

Griffiths said standardization should boost VoB deployments by removing obstacles between network managers and IADs.

“This is a bit of a mess at the moment because you have multiple pre-standard implementations that different vendors are operating,” he explained. “This kind of capability and this standards compliance is the kind of thing that’s going to trigger mass deployment, specifically with the large RBOC customers who have been holding off doing mass deployments of voice-over-DSL technology.”

CopperCom’s technology allows a service provider to configure and monitor performance and reliability regardless of the IAD being used at the end point. “You’re talking about the capability to manage that right down to the individual port level,” Griffiths said.

VoB, particularly DSL, is an important growth ingredient for RBOC and CLEC services, Griffiths said.

“For the RBOCs it solves a lot of problems in terms of copper starvation. As far as the CLECs are concerned, it’s a great market entry vehicle for them. We’re starting to see a lot of CLECs looking aggressively at rolling voice out over the networks,” he explained.

The ultimate goal, he said, is to facilitate a consumer retail model where the end user can take an IAD off the shelf, do a home self-install, and be assured that the service will come on line and be maintained by the RBOC.

“You have to get to the level of interoperability that the telephone has before RBOCs will begin to deploy this stuff. I think these standards and CopperCom’s deployment of them are going to trigger that,” he concluded.