Someone named "wayne" Proclaimed on Sun, 03 Oct
2004 03:33:52 GMT,

here is a blurb about it, it is called circuit switched?


Ahhhhh.. I see what you're talking about now. That is the service the
article you cited was "aquired", from AT&T Broadband. I didn't know
about that. That is on it's way out now - as evidenced in this
article in Cable World, March 10,2003:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...15/ai_98654947

It took me some searching but you're right, here's what I found on the
"circuit-switched" or "CBR" service:

http://www.vonage.com/corporate/pres...R=2003_08_01_5

"Adding phone service has strengthened the bundles even more. Cox
reports that in an area where its video-only churn rate was 1.7
percent in 2001, the churn rate for customers taking video, data, and
voice service as a bundle was 0.8 percent, less than half. Some
players, such as AT&T Broadband - now part of Comcast Corp.- and Cox,
moved into telephony several years ago. They were able to do this by
using constant bit rate (CBR), or circuit-switched service, which
relies on traditional Class 5 telecom switching.
The advent of new technologies such as IPbased or packetized voice
along with the evolving capabilities of cable platforms allows
cablecos to expand CBR phone systems less-expensively with IP or
deploy pure IP telephony systems. All the top cable MSOs and a large
percentage of smaller cablecos, have been testing VoIP infrastructure.
Many have been conducting field and marketing trials. A few even have
full rollouts."


According to Comcast they are going to maintain the CBR clients, but
seek no new ones. Everything is going VoIP my friend. The good news
is with high-speed access already in the house, you won't need that
old 56k modem. The bad news is systems that rely on constant
connection (no packets) like security system dialers, and FAX machines
will suffer hit-and-miss operation due to timing (frequency) issues.


Regards,



-Graham

Remove the 'snails' from my email