Cox Communications, the fourth largest cable operator in the U.S., has begun to move its long distance voice traffic onto its national IP backbone. Cox is using Nortel Networks’ Succession cable VoIP solution and Nuera Communications’ media gateways. The companies confirmed that this is the first packet trunking deployment by a cable operator in North America. Cox currently has some 750,000 voice customers being served over Nortel Networks DMS circuit switches and is handling more than 24 million calls per day. Cox has now deployed Nortel Networks Succession Communication Server 2000 superclass softswitch and has begun to move long distance traffic onto its national IP backbone. Cox estimates this transition will save them millions of dollars in expenditures each year. Cox is also using Nuera’s ORCA GX-21 and GX-8 VoIP media gateways. Financial terms were not disclosed.
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- Earlier this month, Cox Communications provided statistics regarding the influence that telephone and bundling offerings have on its customer relationships. These include:
- 77% of Cox Digital Telephone customers chose Cox’s long distance service offerings over competitors.
- 47% percent of its Digital Telephone customers purchase a full bundle of voice, video and data services from Cox.
- Over 40% percent of Cox’s homes passed can order the company’s telephone service today.
- Phone and high speed Internet service reduces customer churn rates. Customer churn among two-product video subscribers is 25% lower than among video-only subscribers. Among three-product customers, churn is 53% lower.
- Cox said that it continues to explore cost-effective ways to expand its phone service footprint and leverage its existing nationwide IP backbone network, including VoIP technology.
- In May 2003, Juniper Networks announced that Cox Communications had deployed its T-series routing platforms in a national IP backbone. Juniper’s T320 platforms serve as peering points in Cox’s new IP backbone.
- During Q1 2003, Cox added 154,433 high-speed Internet customers, ending the quarter with 1.6 million high-speed Internet customers, representing year-over-year growth of 56%. Penetration in California is now 24%, despite heavy marketing of SBC’s DSL service in the region. The company believes it is capturing 7 out of every 10 high speed Internet customers in the markets it serves. Cable modem service is available in 96% of the Cox footprint. The company also added 64,126 Cox Digital Telephone customers, ending the quarter with 782,546 telephone customers, representing year-over-year growth of 52%.