Comcast picks open source for hosted email, contacts and calendar

Stuart Corner
Monday, 07 May 2007 11:52

Your IT - Home IT

US broadband, cable TV and cable telephony company, Comcast, is planning to offer its consumer customers a service that will integrate email and voicemail and offer hosted contact lists and calendar.

The service, to be called SmartZone and to be launched later this year will be powered by open source software from Zimbra - a  three year old start up which bills itself as the leader in open source, next-generation collaboration and messaging software, which it positions as an alternative to Microsoft Exchange.

The facility to enable customer to manage and synchronise address books will come from Plaxo and the service will be built and operated by HP, according to a report on CNet.

Comcast has more than 24 million basic cable subscribers, around 12 million Internet subscribers and 2.4 million cable telephony customers.