Motorola, Nortel to give voice to cable

Telecom gear provider Nortel Networks and Motorola's Broadband Communications Sector announced Monday that they plan to team up to make gear that will help cable companies offer voice service in addition to high-speed Internet access. The deal is non-exclusive, according to the companies. Financial terms were not disclosed. The gear runs on VoIP (voice over IP) technology. VoIP splits voice data into many packets, and sends them over a telecom network in separate chunks to their destination, where they are reassembled into a regular voice call. The technology uses bandwidth more efficiently and reduces cost, compared with a traditional circuit-switch call, which delivers voice data in its entirety using a continuous connection. --Sam Ames, Special to ZDNet News