Windstream to shutter business-grade legacy service in Atlanta, encourage migration to UCaaS, IP products

Windstream has asked the FCC for permission to shut down business-centric legacy voice service provided via its NuVox subsidiary out of its central office (CO) in Atlanta, citing a network platform that will no longer be supported by its voice supplier.

In an FCC filing, Windstream said this “end-of-life” voice services platform is scheduled to be decommissioned on or about Oct. 12, 2017.

The discontinuance of this service will affect 43 small business customers and eight enterprise business customers in Atlanta. Windstream will help customers affected by this process by migrating their services to Windstream’s supported platform or upgrade to one of the service provider’s unified communications (UC) products.

RELATED: Windstream to discontinue SMB DSL service in CLEC territories, says equipment is no longer supported

Windstream said that customers “will not be unduly harmed because they are being provided ample notice of the discontinuance and are being offered alternative services to the ones being discontinued.”

Business customers have other options at comparable rates from other service providers, including other telcos and cable operators such as AT&T and Comcast that provide similar services.

Windstream said it “believes the proposed discontinuance is reasonable and necessary” and “will take reasonable steps, to the extent that is able, to assure that the discontinuance of this service is not unduly disruptive to the present or future public convenience and necessity.”

This legacy service in Atlanta is just one of several services Windstream has requested to discontinue in recent years due to platforms that are no longer supported by its suppliers. In 2016, the service provider made similar requests to shut down DSL service for small to medium-sized businesses in its CLEC territories and VoiceEclipse VoIP Service.

At the same time, the discontinuance of these services could also play into Windstream’s plans to migrate more of its customer base to its SD-WAN and UC platforms. Having completed its acquisitions of EarthLink and Broadview Communications, the service provider is keen to use SD-WAN and Office Suite UC service sets to breathe much-needed life into its SMB ILEC and CLEC units, which have seen revenue struggles in recent years.

Windstream recently introduced a new SD-WAN/unified communications as a service (UCaaS) bundle as a way to bolster the IP adoption trend for business customers. The service combines Broadview’s cloud-based unified communication (UC) services with Windstream’s SD-WAN solution.