Moving to IP is what this industry is all about. GENBAND has expanded its reach in the rural market with its latest deal with Eastex Telephone Coop.

The deal will see Eastex deploy the GENBAND C15 Compact Softswitch on its 25,000 customer and 4,000 mile East Texas network. The move comes as the telco shifts from a legacy network to all-IP. With the new GENBAND softswitch the Eastex will be able to offer its rural customers VoIP and data services.

With its acquisition of Nortel CVAS and others such as Siemens' Digital Central Office (DCO) business, GENBAND has recently grown from $2 million in sales and 80 employees to $800 million-plus in revenue and 2,200 employees. According to VON, the company is planning an IPO next year.

For more:
- read the article

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The latest Inc. 5000 is out and among the list of the fastest growing companies are some of the businesses we highlight here are FierceVoIP. What I find most interesting about the way Inc. discusses these companies is that it looks at their last three years of growth. With the economy the way it has been in the last three years, you'd be hard pressed to imagine some of the impressive growth numbers these companies have put up.

VOX Network Solutions which offers design, maintenance and installation of converged voice and data services including IP telephony, unified communications as well as mobile services makes the list at #160. The Nortel partner was ranked #2 Best Place to Work in San Francisco, but according to Inc., most of those employees practice what they preach and telecommute. Back in December, the company launched a mobile VoIP app and recently it launched a service geared towards military families. The company has experienced 1736% growth over the last three years!

Coming in at #254 is Vocalocity--a company that experienced 1218% growth over a three year period. Acquired by ZivVa in 2006, the company has turned its VocalOS VoIP soft-switch technology into a hosted environment to develop voice applications rapidly. The VocalocityPBX runs atop of VocalOS solution. Over the last few months Vocalocity has had a number of funding rounds with the most recent bringing in $3.45 million. Vocalocity focuses on small businesses with 50 customers or less and offers all of its own VoIP technology so that they can handle all of their customer needs where some other companies might need outside technicians to service third-party devices.

Another company that we follow quite regularly that is featured in the Inc. 5000 is GENBAND at #690. Recently purchasing Nortel CVAS and launching its combined roadmap and GENius abstraction layer platform, GENBAND, the IP applications, switching and service solutions company, has made some big moves over the last year. GENBAND's IP solutions are deployed by two thirds of the world's 100 largest service providers. GENBAND saw 445% growth over the last three years.

It is great to see some companies in our industry posting huge numbers and making the Inc. 5000 list. It shows that the VoIP sector is still a place of innovation and growth. With these companies showing such success in even some of the worst of times, it's a great indicator of how well our industry at large is doing. Check out the Inc. 5000 here.--Mike

GENBAND announced a new Automated Cutover capability to its C15 Compact Softswitch this week. The capability ends downtime that usually goes hand-in-hand with transitioning to IP networks.

The new Automated Cutover capability is a software utility embedded in the company's C15 softswitch that allows service providers to migrate legacy networks to IP while not having to shut down their network or perform flash cutovers that can result in loss of service for customers. Inbound and outbound calls can continue to route to the legacy TDM or C15 softswitch automatically. The feature will allow testing for lines and trunk facilities during and after the migration.

"Migrating our network at any time, across multiple sites, without interrupting our subscribers' service will significantly reduce the complexity of network transformation," said Richie Parker, Chief Engineer, Surry Telephone Membership Corp in the release. "In the past, we were limited to what we could complete in a single evening, during non-peak hours. GENBAND's Automated Cutover capability gives us the flexibility to perform a phased migration and cutover which is more effective when migrating multiple and large central offices."

GENBAND's C15 Compact Softswitch allows service providers to offer upgraded IP services while also supporting older TDM buildouts to help providers ease the transition to all-IP.

For more:
- read the release

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This week GENBAND announced their future product roadmap including the integration of the Nortel CVAS line of products.

The key announcement involved the launch of the GENiUS Platform. An abstraction layer to combine GENBAND's many products into various configurations to aid companies with speedy solution launches.

According to Natasha Tamaskar, VP of Product Marketing at GENBAND, "the GENiUS platform is a middle layer that abstracts the software applications from the hardware. We see going forward the need to bring different types of components together in our solutions rather than just one product. If we have a common middle layer we can deploy solutions much faster than anyone else. With the common middle layer we can tune systems quite efficiently in terms of taking different configurations... We can also bring products to market much faster than what you would typically look to do if you have an extensive product line."

The GENiUS platform is an all-IP Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture (ATCA) system that will encompass GENBAND's application, call control, session border and security product lines incorporating computing hardware and Service Availability Forum (SAF) compliant middleware.

Additionally, GENBAND reviewed their various appliance series as part of their roadmap of offerings. With the recent addition of Nortel CVAS, GENBAND now has one of the industry's broadest VoIP professional services portfolios. The company has deployed 200 million VoIP ports, has over 600 customers which include two-thirds of the world's marquee service providers over 80 countries.

For the rest of the roadmap:
- read the release

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Happy Memorial Day weekend to Genband and Nortel CVAS! Finally they can take a rest after working on the asset purchase deal and have a happy family BBQ together. The two companies completed the deal on Friday.

With the deal finally on the books, Genband/Nortel CVAS was able to announce some key endorsements from AT&T and Verizon. The merged company also announce that Nortel CVAS' head quarters in Richardson, TX would be combining with Genband's in Plano, TX. Genband is planning some bigger announcments this week including revealing the combined executive team.

For more:
- read the Connected Planet article

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Phone+ has an interesting write up about the recent ratings that GENBAND has received based on its acquisition of Nortel CVAS. Standard and Poor's gave the company an negative outlook because of the deal, while Moody's outlook was a little more rosy. The VoIP softswitch and media gateway segment may be a little rough, but Nortel's CVAS has been getting top marks. What do you think? Read the article here...

Nortel just got approval from the bankruptcy courts in the U.S. and Canada that they could go through with the sale of their Carrier VoIP and Application Solutions (CVAS) assets to GENBAND.

Apparently, the deal still requires the approval of Israeli courts. After that, the companies hope to work through the second quarter of 2010 to transfer the assets, products and customer accounts over to GENBAND.

According to the agreement, GENBAND will pay a purchase price of $282 million, subject to balance sheet and other adjustments currently estimated at approximately $100 million for a net purchase price of approximately $182 million. GENBAND launched a stalking bid for Nortel's CVAS unit in December 2009.

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- read the release

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Migration to VoIP for fixed line and mobile calls has many service providers looking at how they handle interconnection issues. The old TDM network might not be sufficient anymore to handle the volume and complexity of rich IP offerings. What to do? GENBAND is offering up one answer with its Interconnect Solution which allows for seamless any-to-any interconnection of fixed and mobile traffic between any IP or TDM network. 

GENBAND's Interconnect Solution provides support for the gamut of traffic and signaling types: TDM to TDM, IP to IP, and IP to TDM signaling and media interworking. “With our Interconnect Solution, operators are able to cap or replace their legacy TDM networks yet interconnect and route traffic on an any-to-any basis, which simplifies and future-proofs their networks,” said Mehmet Balos, Chief Marketing Officer of GENBAND in a release.

For more:
- read the release

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