"Carriers are seeking to both increase revenue and to retain their customer base from encroachment by cable operators," said Matt Cuson, vice president of marketing for Minerva. "Converged solutions such as what we are presenting with MetaSwitch will provide new financial opportunities for the operators and at the same time revolutionize the way their customers purchase and enjoy television programming."

The combined solution seamlessly blends VoIP, legacy TDM and next generation telephony services, while adding video content. This application of converged IP telephony and video services offers service providers a significant additional revenue opportunity from existing customers as well as a clear competitive advantage in the increasingly competitive subscriber markets to new customers. Through this service offering, subscribers have access to caller ID information, high definition TV broadcasts, pay-per-view, video on demand and personal video recorder features, enabling service providers to deliver a full suite of interactive IP communications and entertainment services.

"This partnership enables our customers to actively participate today in the video over IP market, which is expected to grow ten-fold by the end of the decade, both in terms of revenue and number of subscribers," said Andrew Randall, vice president of marketing at MetaSwitch. "With competition for last mile subscribers heating up and technology rapidly moving forward, traditional telephony providers must deploy new applications, such as video, to participate in this growing opportunity."

The combined MetaSwitch and Minerva demonstration can be seen at the Fall VON Conference and Expo in the MetaSwitch booth, number 855, at the Boston Convention Center. The Expo floor is open to show attendees Tuesday, Sept. 12 through Thursday, Sept. 14.