TMCnet News
Shaw Communications Selects Siemens Shaw Communications Inc., a Canadian cable service provider with approximately 2.9 million customers across Canada, signed an agreement with Siemens to support its new “triple play” strategy of converging voice, data and video services into new applications and build incremental revenues.Shaw Communications is currently developing a digital telephony service based on voice over IP (VoIP) technology. Siemens will deploy SURPASS, an IP telephony network solution to enable the delivery of new converged services. This will allow Shaw Communications to provide innovative voice/data applications over its broadband cable television network. “Siemens was selected for its strong understanding of the cable telephony business and its success in delivering quality of service and reliability in voice services utilizing cable,” said Michael D’Avella, senior vice president, planning, Shaw Communications Inc. “As we move ahead, we look forward to leveraging Siemens expertise in supporting our efforts to prepare the network, customer support and provisioning systems for trials and initial deployment by 2005.” The Siemens SURPASS voice-over cable solution consists of the SURPASS hiQ softswitch as a call management server, the SURPASS hiG trunking gateway and the SURPASS IP Unity media server. The softswitch, gateway and media server are all compliant with the PacketCable interoperability standard. “This is a landmark decision by Shaw Communications to deliver voice services to its customers,” said Thomas Ganswindt, member of the Managing Board, Siemens AG and group president of Information and Communication Networks. “We’re delighted to partner with Shaw Communications in this deployment as it marks the beginning of a new era in the Canadian telecommunications and cable market. This new era of innovation and growth will position SURPASS as the preferred solution for carriers and for cable businesses that want to implement new cost-effective and revenue-generating services.” |