Cable companies beef up their enterprise offerings

Convergence & VoIP This newsletter is sponsored by Network General Ease Application Performance Headaches Four real-world case studies show you how network IT executives are improving performance in Network World's latest Executive Guide, "Perfecting App Performance Management." Also, discover tips, trends and expert advice on how you can take advantage of new technologies to stay ahead of performance problems. Click here to download Network World's Convergence & VoIP Newsletter, 05/14/07 Cable companies beef up their enterprise offerings By Steve Taylor and Larry Hettick The National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA) held its annual trade show (also known as “The Cable Show”) last week in Las Vegas and today, we’d like to offer a few convergence-related highlights. * Senior execs of cable companies at the show reiterated their commitment to expand their enterprise market share by offering business bundles that include voice, video, and data services. * Sprint announced it is expanding its partnership with cable operators to help reach the cable company’s small business customers with VoIP services for enterprises that need one to 12 trunk lines of unlimited local and long distance service. According to a prepared statement, the standard service features include rotary hunting, caller ID to a deskset or PC, call waiting/call forwarding, etc.; business-class directory listings; business-class voicemail including call attendant, find me follow me, voicemail to e-mail and other enhanced features; plus support for business 911 services. Executive Guide - VoIP: No Turning Back Discover how real-work enterprises are deploying VoIP via several case studies Click here for more information. Sprint will also offer cable companies marketing support, including help to train sales and support staff. Sprint already provides consumer and enterprise voice services to Time Warner Cable and Suddenlink Communications; it will also now partner with Baja Broadband and Millennium Digital to offer VoIP services. Sprint launched its VoIP wholesale offering in December 2003 and now provides VoIP services to 14 cable companies supporting more than 1.7 million residential customers. * Cable companies are moving to deploy switched digital video (SDV) this year and next year will begin to deploy DOCSIS 3.0. By installing SDV, cable companies will free additional broadband capacity in their network. By deploying DOCSIS 3.0 they will be able to provide connection speeds of up to 160Mbps while reducing costs by an estimated 70% from today’s cost. Our analysis: While cable companies still have a long way to go to catch with the phone companies with business voice services, they will surely increase competition for high speed enterprise data services over the next year. And by bundling voice and data together with attractive features and prices, cable companies will have an opportunity to turn up competitive heat in the enterprise market.   What do you think? Post a comment on this newsletter

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Contact the author: Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. For more detailed information on most of the topics discussed in this newsletter, connect to Webtorials, the premier site for Web-based educational presentations, white papers, and market research. Taylor can be reached at taylor@webtorials.com Larry Hettick is an industry veteran with more than 20 years of experience in voice and data. He is Vice President for Telecom Services and Infrastructure at Current Analysis, the leading competitive response solutions company. He can be reached at lhettick@currentanalysis.com This newsletter is sponsored by Network General Ease Application Performance Headaches Four real-world case studies show you how network IT executives are improving performance in Network World's latest Executive Guide, "Perfecting App Performance Management." Also, discover tips, trends and expert advice on how you can take advantage of new technologies to stay ahead of performance problems. Click here to download ARCHIVE Archive of the Convergence & VoIP Newsletter. BONUS FEATURE IT PRODUCT RESEARCH AT YOUR FINGERTIPS Get detailed information on thousands of products, conduct side-by-side comparisons and read product test and review results with Network World’s IT Buyer’s Guides. Find the best solution faster than ever with over 100 distinct categories across the security, storage, management, wireless, infrastructure and convergence markets. Click here for details. PRINT SUBSCRIPTIONS AVAILABLE You've got the technology snapshot of your choice delivered to your inbox each day. Extend your knowledge with a print subscription to the Network World newsweekly, Apply here today. International subscribers, click here. SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES To subscribe or unsubscribe to any Network World newsletter, change your e-mail address or contact us, click here. This message was sent to: networking.world@gmail.com. Please use this address when modifying your subscription. Advertising information: Write to Associate Publisher Online Susan Cardoza Network World, Inc., 118 Turnpike Road, Southborough, MA 01772 Copyright Network World, Inc., 2007