Covad, one of the original CLEC’s that has had its ups and downs throughout its history, due largely to the efforts of the telcos to make their life miserable, has announced plans to roll out VoIP services by the end of 2004.
What this means is all customer currently on Covad’s DSL network will be able to add voice by the year’s end. That puts them squarely in competition with the carriers like Quest, SBC and Verizon which want to have both the customer’s voice and data services.
The traditional carriers have been slow to move into the VoDSL marketplace. Once again, some upstart has to get the ball rolling. Seems that Covad has now fired that shot. Covad, which has one of the largest nationwide deployments of DSL, is in a good position.
They are taking their time, rolling out three tiers of service and more importantly, they have customers now to whom they can upsell at reduced marketing costs.