Regional service provider Kerman Telephone has went with Nortel to roll out wireless data and IPTV services to its customers in this central California town.

KermanTel plans to add these services by the first quarter of 2008. Future plans may also include fixed and mobile VoIP as well as integrated multimedia to complete a quadruple-play offering of telephone, Internet, TV and wireless services.

KermanTel is also negotiating to add the City of Kerman as an anchor tenant on its mesh network. This could help the city increase productivity and efficiency with applications such as automated meter reading, mobile workforce automation and online citizen services.

The Nortel IPTV Certified Solution will help KermanTel provide TV programming, including content. It will also provide a foundation for integrated, interactive TV and multimedia communications to support such services as messaging, click-to-call and picture sharing in the future.

Leveraging the Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 8600, the Nortel Application Switch 2424, and the Nortel VPN Router 600, this solution also incorporates elements from Nortel's IPTV ecosystem partners. These include content provisioning from Avail Media for off-air and satellite based MPEG4 encoded content aggregation, iTVManager middleware from Minerva Networks, and content protection using Widevine Technologies' Cypher.

The Nortel Municipal Wireless Solution for KermanTel will use mesh technology to provide wireless coverage over an area of three square miles. Wireless mesh networks employ auto-discovery and self-routing to provide more cost-effective indoor and outdoor Wi-Fi coverage. Nortel was the global market leader in wireless mesh nodes in the second quarter of 2007 with a 26 percent share, according to the Dell'Oro Group.

Nortel also announced today other municipal wireless deployments including wireless mesh networks for FRII (Front Range Internet Inc.) in northern Colorado and mesh and WiMAX networks for the Commonwealth of Kentucky.