ECI Telecom announced that Ringgold Telephone Company (RTC), a local exchange service provider in Georgia, USA, has selected ECI Telecom's ST-200 multiservice edge router to support its interactive entertainment and IPTV video services over DSL. Ringgold selected ECI's ST-200 multiservice edge router for its flexibility to add new services such as VoIP, for its support of a variety of Ethernet densities and for its scalability.

ECI's ST-200 is the first multi-service edge router built specifically for carrier networks combining Internet-class routing, guaranteed bandwidth delivery and integrated service management to enable profitable delivery of broadband, frame relay, Ethernet and IP-based services. The ST-200 Service Edge Router is also the only edge router that supports all carrier packet services in a single platform. This level of flexibility is critical to carriers, such as Ringgold, seeking to broaden their service portfolio and to scale services while reducing infrastructure costs.

"We selected ECI Telecom's edge router to reduce costs and enhance our network in this competitive marketplace, enabling us to offer our customers interactive entertainment, such as IPTV, along with new IP-based services like VoIP," said Phil Erli, Executive Vice President of Ringgold Telephone Company. "We also required a network infrastructure that guaranteed wire-speed performance, QoS, and low-latency. ECI's ST-200 multi-service edge router makes this possible."

Replacing multiple vendors' equipment in the Ringgold network, ECI's ST-200 platform was added and configured with a 16-port Gigabit Ethernet card and OC-12 cards. The ST-200 includes the easy-to-use LPS(TM) provisioning and management system for carrier networks.

"Ringgold's deployment of the ST-series edge router for IPTV underscores our ability to provide a robust solution to help service providers meet the increasing demands of their customers," said Steve Vogelsang, Vice President of Marketing of the Data Networking Division at ECI Telecom. "Supported by ECI's solution, Ringgold has created a service-rich infrastructure that scales to increased capacity without requiring a commensurate increase in capital and operating expense."