UPC Broadband, a division of the cable operator Liberty Global, has chosen Nortel cable VoIP solution to provide new voice services to residential and business customers in Austria, France and The Netherlands.

UPC, with more than 11 million clients in Western Europe, is using the Nortel VoIP solution to provide a simple, user-friendly ‘triple play’ of services - voice, broadband Internet and video - over a single network.

UPC will deploy SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) based VoIP services using Nortel solutions. This will lead to new feature-rich voice and multimedia services - such as presence, instant messaging, video and mobility - and taking the first step towards the integration of mobile and fixed telephony.

UPC Broadband is using an end-to-end VoIP solution that includes Nortel’s PacketCable and Euro-PacketCable-qualified Communication Server 2000-Compact softswitch and AudioCodes’ Mediant 5000 Cable Access Gateway. The network also includes SIP-based Embedded Multimedia Terminal Adapters (E-MTAs) to deliver primary line VoIP along with high-speed Internet access.

“VoIP is a vital part of our strategy to provide a completely integrated voice, video and broadband service tailored to the needs of our residential and business customers,” said Gene Musselman, president and COO, UPC Broadband. “Nortel has helped us with our packet network transformation by delivering a solution that supports next generation IMS-based services.”