German cable network to include Tollbridge voice gateway

(Telephony) Tollbridge Technologies has been given the responsibility to provide a voice gateway for German cable operator Kabel’s EuroDOCSIS-based voice-over-coax network--the world’s first to deliver voice services over DOCSIS 1.1-compliant technology.

The service will begin this July and be completed by 2003 to a universe of more than 4.2 million German homes with high-speed interactive communications capability. Tollbridge’s gateway products were chosen as part of the voice services network being built by systems integrator Nortel Networks.

"We're providing a gateway that will be interoperable with a few different MTAs [media telephony adapters] and BTIs [broadband telephone interfaces] that Nortel is going to be using," said Kevin Woods, Tollbridge's vice president of product management. "Those devices will communicate together so that Kabel can provide voice service over the packet infrastructure that they're building."

Woods said Nortel successfully tested the interoperability of Tollbridge's technology at its Frederichshafen testing facility.

"We're in the integration lab right now with the equipment, doing interoperability testing and performing the early lab trials," he reported. "In a few weeks, we'll start going into the first friend field tests."

Tollbridge does not directly interact with the DOCSIS network, Woods said.

"We provide an application above DOCSIS," he said. "This is going to be EuroDOCIS 1.1, starting with 1.0."

Kabel marks the second time Tollbridge has used its technologies in a voice-over-coax network, following a North American trial with Adelphia.