Covad Smooths Integration With Cisco

Bandwidth provider Covad Communications said Wednesday it has improved its integration with VoIP products from Cisco Systems.

San Jose, Calif.-based Covad has fine-tuned its ClearEdge Integrated Access service for Cisco's Unified CallManager Express, said Dave McMorrow, executive vice president of sales at Covad.

ClearEdge Integrated Access bundles voice and data into an integrated connection so that VoIP, broadband, e-mail and Web hosting services can be billed together. Cisco's Unified CallManager Express solution, a system within Cisco's IOS software, enables call processing for Cisco Unified IP phones.

Until now, coupling Covad's bandwidth services with Cisco's CallManager wasn't always a perfect fit and required thorough testing, according to McMorrow. "We didn't really have it integrated in a way that we were certain it would fly every time it was sold," he said.

Now, with the enhanced ClearEdge Integrated Access, VoIP deployments using Covad services with Cisco products should take less time and yield better results, McMorrow noted.

ClearEdge Integrated Access costs $600 to $1,200 per month, depending on the bandwidth needed and a customer's usage requirements. Covad has about 1,200 reseller agents, which earn an 8 percent to 18 percent recurring commission on sales, McMorrow said.

Covad made Wednesday's announcement in conjunction with this week's 2006 Channel Partners Conference and Expo, a trade show for telecommunications vendors and agents held in Washington, D.C.

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