Austin, Texas -- General Bandwidth, a leading provider of Voice over IP (VoIP) infrastructure solutions enabling rapid deployment and new service revenue generation over broadband networks, will be demonstrating at Cable-Tec Expo 2005 (Booth #8010) integrated emergency standalone capabilities on its award-winning PacketCable™ qualified G6® Universal Media Gateway (MG) for cable operators seeking to maintain local and emergency services when communications are lost with their regional softswitches.

“With today’s Packetcable VoIP network architectures, cable operators face the possibility of losing service, including E911 services, across entire regions when communications to their softswitches are disrupted," said Charles Vogt, General Bandwidth's president and chief executive officer.  "By integrating support for maintaining emergency and local services within our G6 platform, cable operators can now deploy distributed VoIP networks with the same level of service reliability their customers have come to expect when being served by traditional analog telephone lines.”

Today’s cable telephony networks use centrally-located softswitches for call control and features along with distributed media gateways at the edge of the network that trunk VoIP traffic to the PSTN.  As the cable telephony network scales, cable operators need assurances that when communications between the centralized softswitch and distributed media gateways are disrupted, reliable emergency and local calling services can still occur. The G6 platform’s new Emergency Services Module (ESM) provides this added benefit by ensuring that if communications to the softswitch are severed, local and emergency calling continues on the G6 platforms until softswitch communications are restored.

The G6 Universal MG interoperates with leading softswitches using standards-based interfaces and scales easily to meet the needs of any distributed softswitch trunking deployments, including support for CALEA, E911, and security.  The G6 platform allows softswitch control of legacy, circuit-based Hosted Digital Terminals (HDT) equipment and ESM control when softswitch communications are severed.  The G6 platform also provides reverse and trunking gateway functions simultaneously within the same chassis allowing, for example, a softswitch-controlled call from legacy HDT equipment to traverse through the IP network or be trunked to the PSTN.

About The G6 Universal Media Gateway Platform
The G6 Universal Media Gateway Platform is the architectural basis for the multiple media gateway products offered by General Bandwidth.  The G6 platform is a true carrier class VoIP services platform with the capability to simultaneously support multiple service architectures including legacy Class 5 switches, SIP-based feature servers, and next generation softswitches.  The platform supports a variety of packet and PSTN interfaces, scaling from 240 to 16,128 simultaneous DS0s in a single chassis. 

About General Bandwidth
General Bandwidth is a leading provider of Voice over IP (VoIP) infrastructure solutions spanning more than 50 service providers worldwide. General Bandwidth delivers broadband solutions addressing a full range of applications, including residential and business access, trunking and enhanced VoIP solutions.  With nine patents issued and nine pending, General Bandwidth’s flagship G6 Universal Media Gateway and network management system are OSMINE, RUS, PacketCable™, NEBS-3 and TL 9000 certified and deployed in RBOCs, CLECs, RLECs and Cable service provider networks worldwide. General Bandwidth was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Austin, Texas.   Additional information on General Bandwidth is available at www.genband.com.

Contacts:
Noah Sessions
GENBAND Inc.
+1.972.265.3664 (office)
noah.sessions@genband.com

Trademark notes:  G6 and General Bandwidth are registered trademarks of General Bandwidth Inc.