Integra5--a company which specializes in products that integrate television, messaging and telephone technologies, and whose products are, naturally, targeted at so-called "triple-play" providers--says that Staffordsville, Kentucky-based Foothills Telephone Cooperative (provides local and long-distance telephony, high-speed data service and cable TV to 15,000 residential and business customers in the Kentucky counties of Johnson, Lawrence and Magoffin) will next January deploy its TV Caller ID and TV Voicemail Message Waiting applications over its converged, triple-play fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network. The applications are part of Integra5's UniTV Visual Telephony and UniTV Visual Messaging product suites, and Integra5 says that the telco will also eventually roll out other UniTV services, such as its Picture Caller ID and SMS Text Messaging applications.
According to Integra5, the UniTV platform is network-based, and thus requires no new equipment in order to install the TV Caller ID and TV Voicemail messaging apps: the former app automatically displays the name and phone number of the person calling on the subscriber's TV set, even before the phone rings; while the latter app notifies subscribers of the number of voicemail messages waiting for them. Subscribers can also access various menu options for the applications, using their TV remotes: these options include a Call History feature which allows them to view a list of incoming calls (the list includes the caller's name and number, and the time and date of the call), and a Telephony Control Panel that allows them to adjust the duration of the TV Caller ID display on their screen.
Foothills will deploy Integra5's UniTV application server platform in its headend, where it will recognize incoming calls, create the display information, and send it to the subscriber's TV. According to Integra5, the technology is standards-based, features a distributed architecture capable of scaling to support millions of subscribers, and has the processing performance required for real-time delivery of signals between data, phone (both public-switched and IP), cable TV (both traditional and IP) and cellular networks. The company says that it also supports multiple set-top boxes, PC's and phone lines per household.
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