Austin, Texas, June 16, 2004 –General Bandwidth, a leading Voice over IP equipment manufacturer enabling rapid deployment and new service revenue generation over broadband networks, has been selected by Cabovisão, the second largest cable operator in Portugal with more than 780,000 homes passed, to deliver PacketCableTM compliant cable telephony services over their hybrid-fiber coax (HFC) network.

As the only telecommunications operator in Portugal to offer a bundle of triple play voice, video, and high-speed data services; Cabovisão has more than 170,000 Voice customers and is continuing to expand its customer base. With the deployment of General Bandwidth’s G6 VoIP Media Gateway in their network, Cabovisão is benefiting from the scalability of the G6 platform to significantly reduce overall deployment costs of Voice services based on PacketCableTM compliant VoIP technology.

“As we continue to expand our revenues and customer base with our triple play service, the delivery of highly reliable, PSTN-quality voice service is critical to our future success,” says Paul Azar, Voice and Internet Planning & Engineering Manager of Cabovisão. “We talked with a number of suppliers before selecting General Bandwidth. We tested the G6 gateway and decided to deploy it to offer VoIP services to our expanding customer base.”

“We are excited with the growing success of our G6 VoIP Media Gateway with leading cable operators such as Cabovisão,” says Brendon Mills, President and CEO of General Bandwidth. “With the release of our latest Cable VoIP software, General Bandwidth is raising the level of performance of VoIP services so that cable operators can compete head-to-head with traditional circuit-based services from the local telecom carrier.”

The G6 VoIP Media Gateway is a true carrier class, PacketCable-compliant solution providing full redundancy along with the capability of simultaneously supporting PacketCable Line Control (LCS) and Network-based Call signaling (NCS) from a single G6 platform. With the ability to scale to more than 3,360 DSOs or 28,000 customers per chassis, the G6 platform provides the most cost effective solution for cable operators seeking to grow their network on a city-by-city basis.

 

About Cabovisão

Cabovisão is the second largest cable Operator in Portugal and the only one supplying a triple service offer including cable TV, broadband internet and fixed telephony for the residential and business market, with more than 17,5% market share of CATV service, over 4,5% market share of fixed telephony lines, and over 22% market share of high speed cable Internet in Portugal.

Cabovisão has more than 780.000 homes passed in Portugal main land with over 230.000 residential customers and 11.000 business companies as active subscribers, supported by more than 300 employees located in 13 regional offices in Portugal mainland. All services are offered to subscribers trough its unique and 100% digital network with more than 10,000 Km of coaxial cable and over 3,600 Km of optical fiber, passing around all Portuguese main cities.

About General Bandwidth

General Bandwidth provides “Solutions for a VoIP WorldTM” with deployments across more than 37 domestic and international customers while enabling applications such as PacketCable™ cable telephony, VoIP Business Services, and SIP-based IP Centrex. General Bandwidth’s flagship product, the G6® VoIP Media Gateway, delivers high quality, full-featured voice services over a wide variety of packet architectures, including hybrid fiber coax (HFC), FTTP, DSL, and T1. With the capability to simultaneously support voice services from next generation Call Management Servers and Class 5 switches, the G6 platform is a highly scalable, fully redundant, and very flexible service migration platform from which new voice and media features can be deployed. Contact:
General Bandwidth
Tabitha Bailey
+1.805.241.2532
Tabitha.bailey@genband.com