Thomson's Cirpack SoftSwitches Ranked Worldwide Market Leader for Residential VoIP
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VoIP Market Research Company, iLocus, confirms Thomson's global leadership in enabling telecom operators to offer voice over broadband to their residential customers
CeBIT, Hanover, 9 March 2006 - Thomson (Euronext 18453; NYSE; TMS) today announced its Cirpack softswitch has been identified as the leading VoIP platform by iLocus, with 26.4% market share of all the residential voice over broadband lines sold worldwide during 4Q05. This report (28.02.06) further consolidates the leadership position of Thomson's Next Generation Networks activity following its ranking by industry analyst firm, Infonetics in its "Service Provider Next Gen Voice Equipment" study, as the largest softswitch vendor in the EMEA region and third worldwide, for the entire year 2004. This industry ranking is testimony to the company's strategic Two-Year Plan commitment to enhancing its IP devices and solutions offering to help operators to cost-effectively deploy next generation services and applications over their existing networks.
iLocus reported the findings in its "4Q05 Carrier VoIP Equipment" study, which also confirms Thomson as a leading Class-5 Softswitch vendor in the EMEA region for the entire year 2005. Its Cirpack platforms are managing some of the largest VoIP deployments in Europe such as Telecom Italia/Alice and T-Online, but also Free.fr which reported over 1.5 million subscribers as of December 2005, making it the largest VoIP service in Europe.
"In the French market alone, where all broadband lines are now bundled with primary line VoIP services, Thomson is a clear leader with its Cirpack softswitch managing more than two-thirds of the 3 million VoIP lines deployed by operators in the consumer market," stated Jahangir Raina, Director, iLocus. "Cirpack has gained a position of confidence amongst operators worldwide by demonstrating one of the best technologies available on the market for profitable, carrier-grade, primary line VoIP with feature-rich voice services."
And this is just the beginning according to Jean-Pierre Dumolard, General Manager of Thomson's NGN Business Unit, Cirpack "We predict that the number of VoIP subscriber lines in France will double to 6 million by the end of 2006. We are confident that we will increase our market share here, continue to consolidate our leader position throughout Europe and increase our presence in Latin America, Middle East and Africa, leveraging the confidence we have earned with over 76 operators in 28 countries."
Thomson's Cirpack switches started to be developed in 1997 when market deregulation stimulated the founding of many telecom operators looking for alternative voice switching platform for building their infrastructure. Today Cirpack equipment carries several billion minutes per months, handling several of the largest European VoIP services such as Free.fr, T-Online and Telecom Italia. The Thomson Cirpack softswitch platform is designed for delivering primary line voice services and massive deployment of carrier-grade telephony. It can be enhanced with IP Centrex services and is compliant with the IMS and TISPAN architectures.
About Thomson
Thomson (Euronext Paris: 18453; NYSE: TMS) provides services, systems and technology to help its Media & Entertainment clients - content creators, content distributors and users of its technology - realize their business goals and optimize their performance in a rapidly changing technology environment. The Group is the preferred partner to the Media & Entertainment Industries through its Technicolor, Grass Valley, RCA, and Thomson brands. For more information: www.thomson.net
Thomson's Access Platforms and Gateways (AP&G) activity, part of the company's systems and equipment division, is a leading supplier of digital entertainment receivers to the world's major satellite and terrestrial broadcasters, cable operators and telecom service providers. It offers a full range of digital set-top boxes, phones, broadband modems and gateways with modular VoIP, IPTV and wireless capabilities. Through its Next Generation Networks business unit, Cirpack, it is also one of the leading suppliers of softswitch solutions to migrate telecom infrastructures to NGN (Next Generation Networks) and IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) enabling massive deployments of broadband telephony and IP Centrex, for instance. Products are marketed under the RCA, THOMSON, SpeedTouch and CIRPACK brands. You can find more information on AP&G's products at www.thomson-broadband.com and www.cirpack.com
Joanna Pays
International PR Manager
Tel: +33 1 41 44 38 18
jpays@cirpack.com
THOMSON TELECOM
NGN Business Unit, CIRPACK
