Any input on these systems? We are going to be doing a FFTH neighborhood. Seems like a good fit

I have not used the MetaSwitch before.

How many users are you looking at having online total.

If you are wanting a carrier class setup I would look into the Sylantro feature switch works very well.

And for a main voice server I would highly recommend you listen to them about which ones work well. They have been in the business for many years on the carrier side and know what they are talking about.

Just some info.

The 1st community is small: 87 Homes

The 2nd is about 311 homes

The 3rd is 2000 Homes

The 4th is 8000 Homes

Communities 3 and 4 we can probably get onto the same switch. The others will be on their own.

That's a pretty big chunk to bite. Are you sure you have the ability to support such a large network?

No offense intended, but there's a lot more to providing such an infrastructure than switches and wiring. You are becoming a part of a private utility, and homeowners have rights to certain service levels as mandated in their HOA agreements. Backlash years into the future can come back to bite you. Are you sure you can afford this risk if something goes wrong?

We don't have communities with private utilities here anymore for this very reason. One of the communities nearby decided to use a Swedish-design evacuation sewer system (waste is stored at the curb in a tank, then sucked into the system at particular times). It failed miserably. The county is basically saying "we tried to tell you not to do it"; the community association is yanking the property owners for millions of dollars in maintenance. They are being forced to pay septic pumping companies to reduce the volume. Since this situation has gotten so bad, people can't sell their houses in this "exclusive" community. People involved in the original development in the late 1960's are still involved in lawsuits.

The money might sound good, but look well into the future. CYA.

I would have to add on to what ed said.

Working on the carrier side for 10 years in Class 5 switches and Carrier networks I have a little bit of an Idea of the setup.

When it gets into setting up carrier class 4 and 5 switches. It can be a nightmare to say the least. The routing tables make setting up a Cisco 7200 series router like a piece of cake( No offense intended toward the Networking guys on the board). Also setting up the interconnect trunking with the local carriers and registering your NXX's. Setting up A links ( Also known as a SS7 link). LD trunks. When trunks go down you have to trace where the problem is which T-1, DS3, OC3. Wheather or not its a setup issue. A conflict between your switch and the remote carrier switch. And this is not as simple as setting up a E&M trunk. If the Call forwarding isn't working you have to find out why. Feature server problem. Voice server problem. Something between the two. Etc.

Not only that but you can plan on spending a lot on test equipment to have standing by to use in a trouble situation.

Just a few of the things to look at.

I would certianly look into the future as Ed stated and CYA. If you don't have this setup correctly you can be out there much more than you think. Not just days but weeks and months.

I'm actually just helping the Developer in research. The Developer has their own IT/Telecom people who are going to manage the network.

We are going to run the fiber, test and certify. When new customers move in, we hook up the CPE. Call the NOC, they activate the accounts etc, handle all outage problems.

The other leg of the project for us is taking tech support calls and escallating to the NOC if needed.

As I stated previously.

I would look into the Sylantro Feature switch.

They would be able to give you more opened opions on which carrier class Voice switch works the best.

You could always go with a nortel VOIP Class 5 switch or a Avaya VOIP Class 5 switch ( I believe it is the 7ESS. Not postive though).

I have seen the Sonus switch with Sylantro feature switch but had isssues due to the way the company I worked for deployed it.

You would install the metaswitch in conjuction with a Sylantro or similar feature server. Depending on how many bells and whistles you want, the metaswitch itself should cover most of the class 5 features.
If the areas are remotely nearby it's not necessary to get multiple switches. They can handle that load with no trouble.