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Five cable operators in the Netherlands with more than seven million customers are banding together to bypass the incumbent, KPN, for VoIP telephony.
The operators, which currently have more than 500,000 digital phone customers, have awared a VoIP peering contract to a partnership of XConnect, a provider of VoIP interconnection services, and Kayote Networks, which makes equipment for routing and peering.
Ultimately the project, if it works, could knock a big hole in KPN's fixed-line revenue. The five operators, UPC Netherlands, Casema, MultiKabel, Essent and CaiW, have 95% of Dutch households for their cable TV services, and have three million internet customers.
"Our digital telephone business is growing at 50,000 a month," said Sikko de Graaf, director of CaiW, on behalf of the consortium of five.
At the moment calls within individual operators remain VoIP all the way -- but they have not...