Convergent dials up cable VoIP strategy

By Jeff Baumgartner
From The September 30, 2002 Edition Of CED Broadband Direct

After toiling away early and quietly on the PacketCable front, Convergent Networks now appears ready to start making some noise about cable-based IP telephony.

Founded in 1998, Lowell, Mass.-based Convergent had its cable coming-out party this week with the release of “Cohesion,” a PacketCable-based product suite comprised of media gateways, SS7 signaling gateways, tandem proxies and element management systems.

“We’re a company that has been focused on PacketCable from the beginning,” said Convergent Director of Marketing Carl Baptiste. “We’re not coming in as a PacketCable carpetbagger.”

Convergent is also playing up the fact that its equipment is designed to help cable operators create clear demarcation zones between the existing PSTN (public switched telephony network) and the IP telephony side of the network.

That combination “gives [cable operators] a level of simplification and keeps the solution extremely open,” Baptiste said.

So far, Convergent has demonstrated interoperability with a spate of third-party products, including multimedia terminal adapters from Scientific-Atlanta, Motorola Broadband, Arris and Terayon Communication Systems, and cable modem termination systems built by Cisco Systems and Motorola Broadband. The company has also completed test plans with call management servers from companies such as Gallery ipT, Siemens and Telcordia, and is awaiting compliance with CMS vendor Syndeo.

Convergent, which competes in the gateway sector with companies such as Nuera, Cisco, Siemens and Sonus, claims that its gateway product can scale up to about 24,000 calls per shelf.

“We see the [cable VoIP] market emerging,” Baptiste said, noting that most of the major cable players have issued IP telephony RFPs and are well down the path to do technical and revenue-generating trials. Although Comcast Corp. has been upfront about its Philadelphia-area VoIP deployment slated for mid-2003, other MSOs are moving ahead with their own plans, albeit much more quietly, he added.

Convergent isn’t the only one that sees some near-term upside for cable’s VoIP prospects. According to Kinetic Strategies, North American cable operators will sign up 2.4 million IP telephony customers by the end of 2005, and reach 5.8 million subs in 2006.

“Progress is being made and real things are happening,” Baptiste said. “If you’re not in these trials and tests now, you’re probably not in this market.”

That said, Baptiste estimates that trial PacketCable installations should be up and running by mid-2003, with deployments ramping up in 2004. Convergent has at least one lab and one field trial upcoming with undisclosed cable operators, Baptiste said.

Convergent has been shipping product from its Cohesion product line since early 2000, and has shipped more than 100 switches into the market so far. Convergent has about 14 installed customers to date, including Cablevision Systems’ Lightpath division, Broadwing and GlobalNAPs, a CLEC that operates an east coast network.

“We’ve got PSTN experience, which is something I think we bring to the cable market,” Baptiste, said.