Last week, Cox Communications and Nortel announced they will partner to offer premises-based equipment to the business market. Nortel also announced that it has opened the first Small Business Sales Center in North America to give cable companies an advantage in reselling Nortel products and services. The announcements were timed to coincide with the NCTA Cable Show held last week in New Orleans.

The Nortel sales center is designed to help cable partners tap Nortel's small business experience to get assistance so cable companies can enter the small business market rapidly. Sales, products, installation, and support can be provided by Nortel under the cable company's own brand name. Nortel provides a trained team that can make sales calls on the cable company's behalf or offer help desk support to answer customer's questions. Additional services include warehousing, provisioning, configuration, installation and training.

As the first announced customer, Cox Communications will take advantage of Nortel products and support expertise. In addition to Cox Business voice, data and video products, Cox Business customers will now have access to a full range of Nortel's product and services packages including the Business Communications Manager (BCM), Nortel’s hybrid IP PBX.

In a prepared statement, Tim McKinley, vice president of field operations, Cox Business said, "Cox was a pioneer among multiple system cable operators when it began serving business customers 15 years ago, and joining with Nortel to expand our addressable base illustrates our innovative approach still present today. Cox Business can now serve as a trusted provider for voice, data, video and equipment solutions from the point of initial sales consultation to ongoing maintenance and technical support."

Our observation: Cable operators have been targeting the SMB market for years, and in particular they are beginning to expand business-grade VoIP offers. Since businesses of all sizes expect the service provider’s VoIP offer to include the option for premises equipment and tech support, we think that the Nortel support center will help the cable industry more effectively target the SMB voice market. And we commend Cox Communications as the first cable operator to offer SMB market business-class premises equipment with its network services.

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Larry Hettick is a principal analyst at Current Analysis.