MONTREAL – Cogeco Cable today made official its launch of voice over Internet telephony in many of its major service areas.
Over the last year, Cogeco Cable has successfully tested its new digital telephone service in the Trois-Rivières area in Québec and in the Burlington/Oakville Ontario corridor.
These conclusive trials, as well as the market studies conducted at the same time, have helped to better pinpoint the services and functions that customers want, says the company.
In 2001, Cogeco abandoned testing it was doing in the telephony space after spending about $25 million, saying it would wait for the technology to mature. With many other providers having launched – or about to launch – VOIP, the technology is certainly mature and Cogeco joins a large slate of other VOIP operators (Vonage, Primus, Babytel, etc.) and its cable counterparts (Shaw, Videotron, EastLink, Mountain Cablevision, Whistler Cable) in the telephony space. Rogers will launch its VOIP product in July.
Cogeco Cable’s High-Speed Internet (HSI) customers in Burlington and Oakville can sign on beginning today. Service will then be extended gradually to most cities served by Cogeco Cable by December 2006.
Cogeco’s digital telephone service includes a package that provides unlimited calling in Canada and the continental United States, the five most widely used telephone features, and basic operator assistance and information services.
The starting price is $44.99 a month for Cogeco’s multiple service – or bundled – customers. The monthly rate for customers subscribing solely to Cogeco Cable’s HSI service is $49.99. There are no additional charges or contracts to sign. Customers can keep their existing telephone number and telephone.
The most widely used telephone features are included in the package: voice mail, call display, call waiting, visual call waiting and call forwarding. The package also includes directory assistance (411), operator (0), emergency (911) and technical assistance (611) services, as well as a battery to ensure up to eight hours of operation in the event of a power failure.
Installation and one-month free is also included in the start-up package.
"A new era is beginning for Cogeco Cable customers. Starting now, they can reap the rewards of competition in the telephony sector with these attractive packages. For the future, Cogeco Cable is looking at more evolved services, like integrated PC-telephone-television messaging, affordable video telephony, and sophisticated call routing. These cutting-edge services will be available on Cogeco Cable’s high-performance networks, and will help reshape our customers’ telecommunications expectations," said Louis Audet, president
and CEO of Cogeco Cable, in a release.
The company’s market studies show that consumers who are interested in digital telephony are, first and foremost, interested in enjoying substantial savings and want more functionalities and turnkey service.
“To ensure high-quality service capable of responding to market demands, Cogeco Cable has teamed up with outstanding partners. Telus will provide the interconnection with the public switched telephone network (PSTN),” says today’s release.
The residential digital telephone service will use network technology provided by Cisco Systems(R), including IP (Internet Protocol) soft switches and voice gateways that support CableLabs’ PacketCable standard and the Internet Engineering Task Force’s SIP (Session Initiation Protocol). For now, the equipment at the customer’s premises uses the PacketCable standard.
"The technology chosen offers attractive possibilities. In the not-too- distant future, many people will be interested in video telephony, and numerous other applications, such as the cockpit, will change how we handle our telecommunications. We will evolve in step with our customers’ expectations, and continue to offer them the best products at a fair price," added François Audet, director, Telecommunications for Cogeco Cable.
