Time Warner Cable selects RAD pseudowire platform for TDM service delivery over metro Ethernet

November 4, 2005 Mahwah, NJ -- RAD Data Communications and Time Warner Cable have announced the deployment of RAD's TDMoIP pseudowire technology as part of Time Warner Cable's metro Ethernet service offering in its Houston, Texas market. RAD says its IPmux family of TDMoIP gateways will enable customers to take advantage of the operator's Ethernet services, while providing integrated support for existing TDM services over the same Ethernet transport network.

The RAD IPmux platform supports TDMoIP pseudowires, or the ability to transparently transport TDM circuits such as T1 and T3 across Ethernet, IP, or MPLS networks. With thousands of miles of fiber deployed for their private network in Texas, Time Warner Cable says its high-speed metro Ethernet platform provides its customers with an attractive alternative to incumbent local access service providers.

"We likely have the largest contiguous and completely independent fiber network in the metro space, servicing enterprise and carrier customers," says Chuck Sweeney, VP of Time Warner Cable-Houston's Business Solutions unit. "We're completely independent of Bell facilities and span the geography currently served by at least five separate ILECs here in the Houston metropolitan area,"

According to Time Warner Cable, in the Houston market it became apparent that despite the huge demand for Ethernet to support existing and emerging IP applications, many customers still required T1 and T3 interfaces to support legacy TDM equipment. As a result, the operator undertook a formal process to evaluate various pseudowire platforms and to select a provider to support TDM-over-Ethernet across Time Warner's metro Ethernet network.

"We decided we needed to do a vendor bake-off and to perform a formal network trial," explains Sweeney. "We had to make sure the vendor we buy from is financially stable, that they have adequate support capabilities, and that we could count on them to support our customer applications over the long term. We also wanted a provider that can service other Time Warner Cable technology needs."

Following laboratory testing with multiple vendor platforms, and a subsequent three-month, live, on-network trial, RAD's IPmux platform was selected for deployment in Time Warner Cable's network to support customer pseudowire applications.

According to a press release, one of Time Warner Cable's first customers for integrated Ethernet and TDM access was a large, nationwide cellular telephone provider; as a result, the operator says it saw the potential of offering low-cost Ethernet connections to the cellular operators in their region. With the Time Warner Cable service, operators have access to high bandwidth, low latency Ethernet connections for tower-to-MSC (mobile switching center) connectivity, and use RAD's IPmux pseudowire solution to transport the TDM traffic across the same Ethernet link.