Covad and EarthLink have announced a new partnership to offer Covad’s DSL based offerings to EarthLink customers. The new partnership according to EarthLink will not displace its current VoIP relationship with Vonage.
The bundled phone and broadband offering will begin market trials this coming October in Seattle, Dallas, San Francisco and San Jose. The joint offer will be powered by Covad’s line-powered voice access technology which operates over traditional copper wiring . The offer is intended to be a competitive alternative to local phone companies by providing an all in one local/long distance phone service together with broadband access all using a customer existing computer equipment.
According to EarthLink spokesperson Jerry Grasso, the Covad-powered VoIP service will coexist with EarthLink’s existing Vonage-powered Unlimited Voice VoIP offer.
“EarthLink Unlimited Voice is the product that we partner w/Vonage on. It is primarily aimed at Cable users,” Grasso told EnterpriseVoIPplanet.com. “This would be the product they could use to ‘fire their phone company’ with, because they already have a high-speed service with an MSO.”
On the hand, Line Powered Voice is the product that EarthLink is set to do market trials on with Covad. “It is a DSL product that is targeted toward existing EarthLink DSL users, dial up users that are ready to migrate up, other provider DSL users, or people that want a lower cost voice solution while keeping DSL service,” Grasso said.
