Vol. 1, No. 1  •  Spring 2005

In This Issue...

CEO Connect
The importance of a timely deployment, high quality of teamwork and dedication to the implementation.

Customer Spotlight
Liberty Puerto Rico: The story behind a successful deployment.

Educational Technology
Calling all platforms! Sorting out SIP and PacketCable: Which is the best way to deploy telephony quickly and efficiently?

Product Spotlight
Customer premises equipment: A critical piece of the cable telephony experience.

What's Happening @ Net2Phone?
Links to recent press releases and a list of trade shows and events where Net2Phone is scheduled to appear.

CEO Connect

Welcome to the first installment of Net2Phone Connections, our newsletter designed to keep you current about news in the broadband VoIP industry and what Net2Phone is doing to help our cable partners compete effectively in this rapidly evolving market. Net2Phone Connections will keep you abreast of recent product developments, introduce you to our new partners, update you on current deployments and provide a forum for sharing our perspective on timely industry topics.

To those of us who have been in this industry for many years, VoIP means flexibility -- flexibility of features, products and services that can make consumers' lives easier and more convenient.

But it also means constant change and breathtaking variety from a market that continues to improve and innovate. At Net2Phone, we believe that the cable industry is uniquely positioned to profit from the VoIP transformation, and we have dedicated ourselves to helping our partners understand the many technologies, separate the truly useful from the high-tech gimmicks and make sensible choices about which products and services will deliver sales and keep satisfied customers. We work together with our partners to weave the various elements into their existing back-office systems, prepare their installation and customer service teams for market launches and then back the deployments with 24x7 maintenance and support.

Nobody knows VoIP better than the men and women of Net2Phone who have been defining the cutting edge of this industry for nearly a decade. Together with our partners, we now have the opportunity to catapult VoIP into more than just a competitor to old-style telephony, but a must-have, value-adding improvement that draws customers to cable and keeps them.

We hope you find this newsletter helpful and insightful. We appreciate your interest in Net2Phone and look forward to working with all of you to make your new telephony businesses successful.

Liore Alroy
Chief Executive Officer

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Customer Spotlight: Liberty Puerto Rico

As part of its plan to expand its product offerings, Liberty Cablevision (LPR), a cable franchise passing more than 300,000 homes in Puerto Rico, contracted with Net2Phone to deploy PacketCable compliant telephony throughout its footprint.

Net2Phone collaborated with LPR on all network engineering and on the design of the cable telephony solution over LPR's Hybrid Fiber Coaxial (HFC) plant to the interconnects on the PSTN. Net2Phone tested, integrated and deployed all the PacketCable elements including the softswitch gateways and announcement server, and worked closely with LPR to integrate into their back office systems and tailor a solution that met their unique requirements.

In May 2004, LPR unveiled its phone service under the brand name 'Liberty VoiceLinks' to all of the customers within their two-way upgraded cable plant, covering approximately 90% of their footprint. Customers were offered
different service plans starting at $24.95 per month, which included all CLASS 5 features and voice mail. Designed to mirror the traditional PSTN offering, Net2Phone's cable telephony service also supports e911, operator assistance, and CALEA.

Almost immediately, LPR began experiencing accelerated enrollment trends with its customers, with an average rate of 1000 subscribers signing up for the service monthly. Today, LPR sees an average of over 1000 minutes of use per month per VoiceLinks subscriber with 35% of those minutes being used for inbound phone calls. The high level of inbound minutes and outbound voice traffic indicates that subscribers have adopted their cable phone as their primary telephone line. In addition, 44% of their telephony subscribers are triple play customers, and 52% of their telephony subscribers receive both telephony and video service.

By delivering a toll quality, fully managed telephony service in conjuction with Net2Phone, LPR has seen a 33% reduction in churn across all of its services when subscribers take voice. Encouraged by these results, LPR plans to aggressively market residential telephony throughout 2005, plus offering new services aimed at small businesses.

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Educational Technology: Calling All Platforms!

Growth in the broadband telephony sector has prompted operators of all sizes to ask, "What is the best way for me to deploy telephony quickly and efficiently?" Industry discussions about alternative standards like the PacketCable and SIP protocols have led some to start their analyses of that question with an evaluation of the various technologies. But we believe that the more appropriate place for most operators to start is with a decision about what kind of voice service they believe their customers will want and be willing to pay for.

Of course, that critical marketing judgment will depend upon a host of factors, including the local competitive landscape for telephony, the most effective pricing structure for different services, the investment needed to deploy, the cost of operating the service, and the time it will take to get to market. Once an operator has made its way through some of those issues, the analysis of the underlying technology becomes less about where an operator wants to get and more about how to go about getting there.

SIP opens up communications between two intelligent end points, which keep all of the communication data about the call. In a SIP environment, call management, CLASS features, billing and provisioning platform and enhanced services are all remotely managed from a centralized softswitch, making it agile and cost effective to deploy.

In a PacketCable environment the majority of the "intelligence" lies in the network, with a robust platform offering phone service that resembles traditional telephony in terms of service, quality, features, functionality, security and reliability. Using Net2Phone's network management toolset enables an operator to assure a fully managed end-to-end VoIP cable telephony service, that can guarantee quality and security from call inception through termination.

For those who are still "on the fence" on picking a protocol, the emerging PacketCable Multimedia (PCMM) standard may present the best of both worlds, using SIP endpoints on a PacketCable platform.

Regardless of the operator's decision, both technologies support a complete set of telephony features and functionality, including call waiting, caller ID, voice mail, plus web-based tools that allow subscribers to manage their telephony features online as well as check their voice mail.

Today, Net2Phone is the only provider that can meet the needs of domestic and international cable operators looking to deploy full-featured residential phone service over any broadband IP connection on both SIP and PacketCable platforms. By offering numerous options for cable telephony deployment, Net2Phone helps its partners deploy the service that best suits their local needs.

The differences between a PacketCable telephony service and SIP-based telephony service:

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Product Spotlight: Customer Premises Equipment

Every successful structure relies upon a strong and stable foundation. A telephony deployment is no different. The fully managed, end-to-end quality of service solution you deliver to your customers will only be as good and reliable as the elements that tie it together.

This begins at the customer's home. The equipment you install is out of reach of your technical staff and will not have the benefit of a redundant system as back up should it fail. The VoIP cable modem you choose and network management tools you use to interact with it are critical to ensuring long-term customer satisfaction. You need easy and dependable remote access to solve customer issues and allow for reconfigurations and the installation of software upgrades. The device should also be certified to ensure interoperability with other components in the solution, including the CMTS.

At Net2Phone, we recognize the importance of the VoIP cable modem. We work closely with our MSO partners to identify the right device for their customer needs and the unique characteristics of their existing networks. CableLabs® certifies devices to meet their signaling and protocol specifications. Net2Phone thoroughly tests the entire end-to-end solution in our lab in both "sunny day" and "rainy day" scenarios using the same equipment and software revision levels that our customers use. This insures that devices are qualified to work in the cable operator's actual field environment. Similarly, all code upgrades and even advanced models of products pass through our testing labs. This gives cable operators the piece of mind that those changes will integrate seamlessly, provide the correct functionality and not interfere with the existing plant operation.

One device that Net2Phone has implemented into a telephony deployment is the Motorola SURFboard® SBV4200 VoIP Cable Modem. Liberty Cablevision of Puerto Rico and Net2Phone worked closely together to certify the SBV4200 for the Net2Phone CableLineSM telephony rollout, branded as Liberty "VoiceLinks".

The Motorola modem is a single DOCSIS® 1.X device providing operational remote management and support, quality and reliability of PC connectivity for Internet access, two distinct phone lines to connect standard analog telephones, fax machines, and other voice appliances. In addition, the SBV4200 includes enhanced features such as automatic fax/modem processing, direct SNMP and TFTP configuration, and firmware downloads from the head-end. For ease of installation, the SBV4200 also provides the choice of an Ethernet port (RJ-45) or a USB port to connect to the computer.

Through its agreement with Motorola, Net2Phone has access to new products for testing and integration into the overall CableLine solution while they are still in development, e.g., the next generation SURFboard® SBV5120 VoIP cable modem. The SURFboard® SBV5120 PacketCable 1.0 and DOCSIS 2.0 certified product offers PSTN voice quality along with cable modem data service support for high performance computing and high speed Internet access. Net2Phone has certified the SURFboard® SBV5120 for use in both DOCSIS® and EuroDOCSIS® environment, providing a next generation product for both domestic and international use.

Net2Phone has similar agreements with other vendors such as Arris and Terayon. With these agreements, Net2Phone delivers a complete multi-vendor solution with components selected by the MSO partner and certified, integrated and supported by Net2Phone's Quality Assurance and Interoperability Labs.

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What's Happening @ Net2Phone

Click here for a list of recent press releases and company announcements.

Click here for a list of upcoming trade shows and events where Net2Phone is scheduled to appear. At the bottom of the list is an online form for arranging a meeting with a Net2Phone representative.

Please note that the above links will open in new browser windows.

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