Tellabs, Riverstone sign strategic alliance

LOS ANGELES (Telephony) — Tellabs and Riverstone Networks today at the Western Cable Show announced a strategic alliance that will expand Tellabs' Cablespan product line as well as provide a migration path into voice over IP services.

Under the deal, the company’s will combine Tellabs’ Cablespan 2300 and MartisDXX systems with Riverstone’s RS family of edge routers. The result will be a system, marketed under the Cablespan 2700 name, will be targeted at a number of groups including cable operators that have held off deploying telephony services.

“The beauty of Riverstone is that their router isn’t just a [cable modem termination system] router,” said Kenneth Craft, director of business development for Tellabs’ broadband media group.

The deal is part of a larger effort by Tellabs to allow cable operators to offer services such as lifeline voice over IP, service level agreements, streaming media and virtual private networks.

The 2700 product also can be used by cable operators currently deploying circuit switched voice services as a migration path to an all IP-based access network. That environment, where voice is delivered over a call server model won’t be created for some time, though, according to Craft.

“We think 2001 still seems to be a year of trialing call server models. Not commercial rollouts, but market tests.”