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Time Warner Cable, which was among the first cable operators in the circuit-switched telephony business, has taken its boldest step yet in returning to the voice market with the rollout of residential voice-over-IP service in New York City.
The service, branded digitalphone, will be deployed to all 1.4 million Time Warner cable subscribers across the metro area by the summer of 2005. Like other cable VoIP offerings, Time Warner initially is targeting its existing cable modem and digital video subscribers with preferential pricing. Customers with high-speed data and digital cable can have unlimited local and long-distance for $39.95 per month, compared with $44.95 or $49.95 for digital-only or analog-only customers, respectively.
The company also is launching number portability immediately, which it believes is a key element to attracting customers.
“Over 90% of our customers choose to keep their existing number for convenience,” said Howard Szarfarc, president of Time Warner Cable of New York and New Jersey.
The move also marks the largest deployment of Sprint's cable solution, a nationwide agreement to provide long-distance traffic, 911 service, relay systems and operator services for the nation's second-largest cable operator.
“With Time Warner, we're playing the part of a local tandem,” said Mark Chall, director of service delivery for Sprint's Cable Solutions Group, noting that the carrier is using a softswitch behind Time Warner's own softswitch. “Right now, we're [connecting the two] with a traditional SS7 link, but in the very near future, we'll migrate that over to SIP trunks.”
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