D&E Comms Plans VOIP Service

EPHRATA, Pa. -- D&E Communications, Inc. (NasdaqNM:DECC - News), a leading regional broadband integrated communications provider, has deployed General Bandwidth's G6® Universal Media Gateway Platforms, together with Acme Packet's Net-Net® session border controllers, to power its Jazzd® Phone VoIP service.

Jazzd Phone Service for Broadband, which incorporates InnoMedia's telephone adapter, offers unlimited local and long-distance calling plus customized features such as D&E's telemarketing call blocking service. Jazzd Phone Service provides enhanced 911 emergency calling service to customers in its 12-county target market in central Pennsylvania. Subscribers will be connected to their local Public Safety Answering Point when they call 911, and they also can set up an enhanced feature to provide their address to the PSAP when they call.

The VoIP service, introduced in April, resulted from an innovative combination of products from leading suppliers of IP technology.

"D&E Communications' selection of General Bandwidth's G6 media gateway and Acme Packet's session border controller provides a highly scalable solution," said Chuck Schneider, Manager, Network Engineering at D&E. "This combined solution allows for an initial deployment of VoIP services via the Internet today, using the current installed base of legacy Class 5 switches, while providing the foundation for offering future VoIP services via next generation switching technologies."

With the ability to support multiple voice service architectures including legacy Class 5 derived, SIP-based feature servers, and next generation softswitches, General Bandwidth's G6 Universal Media Gateway Platform is being deployed by leading carriers seeking to deliver multiple voice service offerings from multiple call control solutions while providing the ability to deliver unmatched VoIP voice quality and greater than 99.999% service availability. Built upon a fully redundant, custom-designed architecture supporting from 240 to 16,128 DS0s on a single chassis, the G6 platform provides D&E with a highly flexible access and trunking media gateway that reduces the equipment costs of deploying voice services across their network.

"General Bandwidth is focused on delivering the highest quality media gateway to leading carriers like D&E who are seeking true carrier grade performance and high VoIP quality of service," said Charlie Vogt, president and CEO of General Bandwidth. "We are pleased to be a technology partner with D&E as they begin to rollout their residential VoIP service."

"D&E Communications selected Acme Packet's Net-Net session border controllers for their Jazzd VoIP service because the Net-Net products meet the security and service reach maximization requirements that are so crucial for the delivery of real-time IP communications services, such as VoIP, to residential broadband subscribers," commented Andy Ory, president and CEO, Acme Packet.

The Acme Packet session border controllers are providing access control and complete topology hiding at all protocol layers for confidentiality and attack prevention. The denial of service (DoS) protection includes session agent DoS protection for protecting D&E's infrastructure (including General Bandwidth G6 Universal Media Gateway Platforms and the Nortel DMS 100s) and session border control DoS protection, an autonomic self-protection against malicious and non-malicious DoS attacks and overloads. To extend its service reach, D&E is utilizing the hosted NAT traversal features which allows them to traverse NATs and firewalls at the customer premise, a huge challenge to offering secure, real-time interactive IP communications.

Ory continued, "With the Acme Packet session border controllers, D&E will broaden the reach of their business while continuing to serve their existing, loyal residential customers. By expanding their service reach to customers all across the U.S., D&E is realizing the enormous growth opportunity that comes with offering advanced and innovative IP communications services."

"InnoMedia telephone adapters are field proven for high availability, superior voice quality and value," said Dr. Nan-Sheng Lin, President of InnoMedia. "Our standards compliance design greatly simplified the integration of InnoMedia devices with General Bandwidth and Acme Packet equipment and made it ideally suited for D&E Communications' Jazzd Phone Service."

D&E Communications Inc.