[January 12, 2005]

PRT and Nortel Bring VoIP to Puerto Rico

BY JOHANNE TORRES

Okay, I have to confess I have been waiting for this one since I moved back to Connecticut. Puerto Rico Telephone (PRT) and Nortel announced today that they are bringing VoIP to Puerto Rico. You see, I lived in San Juan for about five months during 2004. During those months, Adelphia Communications had just begun offering broadband Internet service via cable. The company was the only one with such an ambitious service offering. We are finally really starting to get ahead in the telecom industry, I thought. I then started talking to my dad—a Verizon/ Puerto Rico Telephone (PRT) executive, about the impact this would have in the island’s Internet connection access choices. Because of his hefty employee discount, he only knew about DSL.

Since I got back to Connecticut and started working for TMC and its Internet Telephony magazine, I have been talking to my dad about VoIP. I told him it would shake up the way Internet users in the island communicated, even more than back then, when the availability of broadband service via cable was the newest and hottest thing that caught the eyes of Puerto Ricans.

PRT was always owned by the Puerto Rican commonwealth government, until ex-governor Pedro Roselló decided to make the company a private entity up for sale. A few years later, Verizon decided to place a bid, and PRT became a Verizon affiliate.

Today, PRT announced that VoIP-enabled services will be an option for consumers in the island wanting to benefit from the great cost savings obtainable from Internet telephony services. PRTC will be launching a suite of new multimedia and advanced voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services to residential and corporate customers throughout the island using converged VoIP and multimedia communications solutions from Nortel.

"PRT is taking IP technology to the residential market as well as small and medium businesses in Puerto Rico in response to the growing local demand for sophisticated telecom services," said Thomas Perez Ducy, chief marketing officer for PRT. "With Nortel's world-class voice over IP solutions and thorough knowledge of our network requirements, today we have a highly flexible network that will help us address current and future market demand while keeping operational costs down."

Nortel's VoIP and multimedia solutions will give PRT the ability to offer residential customers a new level of communications control and personalization, providing them with an integrated communications solution that includes voice and video calling, text messaging, and file and Web sharing. Both companies say that Individual household members can create personal communications profiles via a personal communications Web site, allowing them to establish a single contact number for all their communications devices that permits them to function as a single, integrated communications tool.

"An advanced voice over IP infrastructure such as the one PRT is building will greatly enhance the communication experience of its customers, helping to increase their functionality, mobility and productivity," said Manuel Terrero, vice president, Wireline Networks, Nortel, Caribbean and Latin America. "We are proud to continue our long-standing business relationship with PRT. We've worked closely with them to deliver a robust and secure infrastructure that will help position them to drive new, revenue-generation services."

PRT's VoIP network will feature Nortel's Multimedia Communication Server (MCS) 5200—which uses open standards-based software and commercially available hardware to help service providers deliver a suite of multimedia and collaboration services that can be integrated with existing telephone services. PRT has also deployed Nortel Communication Server 2000 superclass softswitches. Additionally, PRT is participating in Nortel's MarketForce program, a comprehensive joint marketing program.

PRT will also introduce the 'PhoneMax' service in the island—a service based on Nortel MCS 5200 Multimedia PC Client. PRT customers can use this PC-based software phone as a primary desktop phone, supplementary phone or telecommuter phone. The company says it eliminates the need for a traditional voice line, using a single Internet connection for both voice and data connection.

Puerto Rico Telephone
http://www.telefonicapr.com/prtc/portal/front/0,1058,2153,00.html

Nortel
www.nortel.com