Cedar point adds $19m in financing

Cable World, Feb 25, 2002

Cedar Point Communications, a New Hampshire company developing a PacketCable-based telephony technology for cable operators, last week said it completed an initial round of $19 million in private-equity financing.

Charles River Ventures and Battery Ventures have committed capital to the development and commercialization of Cedar Point's Cable Media Switching System.

Cedar Point previously had been funded by its founders and other investors, led by Ascent Venture Partners.

Cable Media Switching combines attributes of the class 5 voice switches used by traditional telephone companies with elements of distributed voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) networks in a single PacketCable-based system.

The technology began lab trials with Comcast Corp. in November 2001.

"Cable operators have pointed to cost and complexity as the two primary impediments to a nationwide rollout of telephony services," said Bruce Sachs, partner with Charles River Ventures, in a statement. "In Cable Media Switching, Cedar Point has created the first solution that addresses those concerns, both in terms of initial implementation and ongoing operations."

"Cedar Point is in an ideal position, both to accelerate the deployment of VoIP solutions and to provide an elegant migration path to VoIP for today's circuit-switched systems," said Todd Dagres, partner with Battery Ventures. "Their uniquely innovative approach is the only VoIP platform to match the high-quality attributes of today's voice public network."