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Azulstar Networks announced the launch of the world's first metro-wide Voice over Wi-Fi telephone service. The carrier class fixed and mobile service, which was developed by Azulstar Networks and its partners, operates over the converged city-wide Wi-Fi wireless network that already spans over 60% of Rio Rancho.
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With the announcement, Azulstar has fully demonstrated a highly cost effective alternative to the traditional telecom "local loop" which has dominated telephone service, inhibited competition and kept pricing unnecessarily high for several decades. Azulstar developed the phone service in partnership with Ecuity, Inc., a leading enhanced Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) communications company.

"We believe this is the nation's largest and most advanced city-wide Wi-Fi network, and the combination of Azulstar's innovative Wi-Fi technology and Ecuity's leading VoIP services will make Rio Rancho a model for city-wide Wi-Fi and the premier digital city" explained Jim Palenick, Rio Rancho city administrator. "We are excited to be a pioneer with this first-of-its kind service and look forward to the advantages it will bring to our residents and businesses."

Wi-Fi / WiMAX fixed and mobile phone networks such as Azulstar's Rio Rancho network are poised to transform the telephone industry by bypassing the traditional "local loop" and offering unified, IP-based networks capable of delivering a host of integrated services.

"By partnering with governments, technology leaders and other service providers, we are able to quickly design and deploy Wi-Fi / WiMAX mobile networks and services like the one we've deployed in Rio Rancho" said Tyler van Houwelingen, Azulstar CEO. "As more cities follow Rio Rancho's lead, it's going to have a profound impact on telco and wireless industry dynamics. Businesses and residents of forward-thinking digital cities like Rio Rancho are the chief beneficiaries. The cities themselves also benefit by providing a more attractive place to live and do business. Ultimately, all consumers will benefit as this lays the foundation for better service, new services and lower prices."

The Azulstar Voice over Wi-Fi telephone service is now available for residential, business and mobile telephone users throughout the 505 area code. Customers can select from a variety of fixed and mobile handsets, choose a local phone number or keep their existing number.

Seamless mobile telephone network coverage is already available throughout 60% of the city of Rio Rancho. Subscribers outside of Rio Rancho can also purchase any of the services, however, mobile coverage is limited to their residence 500 feet of their customers outside Rio Rancho. Features included with all calling plans include caller ID, call forwarding, voice mail over e-mail, multi-party calling, call waiting and Web based call control manager.

Pricing for residential fixed/mobile phone service has been set at $29.95/line for unlimited calling within the USA + Canada. The Azulstar Business phone services adds 4-digit inter company calling, a fax line and a Soft-PBX, which eliminates PBX hardware and provides a suite of centralized call control. Azulstar expects typical small business to save between 40-60% off of their current bill and in most cases can leverage existing hardware. Later this year, Azulstar plans to add seamless roaming in and out of cellular CDMA and GSM networks.

The Azulstar city-wide Wi-Fi network was designed from the ground up to be a converged voice, data and video network and is the worlds largest and highest performing network yet constructed. Some 200 high performance Wi-Fi access points provided by Meru Networks provide a seamless "cellular" Wi-Fi cloud across the city. Advancements incorporated in the nearly complete network include end to end Quality of Service to standard Wi-Fi clients, 802.11a/b/g client access, and seamless mobility across the city at speeds up to 55mph with handoffs under 3ms.

A pre-WiMAX backbone from Proxim Corporation connects the access points back to the Azulstar network operations center (NOC) and eventually the public Internet. Azulstar partner Ecuity Networks provides call transport and termination from the Internet onto the traditional phone network and vice versa. The service is based entirely around the SIP protocol and voice compression is accomplished using both the G.711 and the G.729 Codec.

Copyright © 2005. Broadband Wireless Exchange Magazine.

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