Broadwing Communications is readying to enter the Voice-over-IP battle, and it has selected the executive to lead that charge.

The Austin, Texas-based broadband service provider has named Mark Pugerude to vice president and general manager of its softswitch services division, which will oversee the company’s foray into VoIP.

Plans are to use Broadwing’s fiber-optic network to deliver VoIP, offering a suite of services—personal Web portals, unified messaging and voice VPNs—for its mid-market and enterprise customers later this year. Broadwing also plans to offer provisioning portals for its large enterprise and carrier customers nationwide.

“With other service providers having deployed legacy networks, Broadwing’s unique, all-optical network architecture is the perfect foundation for this emerging technology that will ensure a low latency, high quality VoIP offering that is also cost-effective for customers,” said Broadwing CEO Mark F. Spagnolo.

Pugerude comes to Broadwing from PingTone Communications, where he oversaw the company’s sales and marketing initiatives, new products and IP telephony channel development.