Tazz adds apps to policy control

Tazz Networks today introduced an application module for its Policy Control System aimed at helping carriers customize the management of network services such as voice-over-IP (VOIP) and video.

Tazz’ Policy Control System, available since last fall, is sold globally through an original equipment manufacturer partnership as Cisco Systems’ Broadband Policy Manager. It helps determine whether sufficient access network capacity exists for activated applications, and when it doesn’t, the PCS decides what to do about it based on pre-programmed policies.

For example, a carrier may program the system to give priority to higher-end services, such as a $30 pay-per-view event over a $2 on-demand movie. It may give preferential treatment during certain hours of the day to customers who subscribe to a higher level of service.

“It gives the network operator the ability to programmatically represent their business logic,” said Chad Dunn, Tazz’s vice president of marketing.

The application module introduced this week includes a signaling interface, admission control (which performs the core function of administering service policy), path computation (which calculates the effect of a service quality request) a network topology database, a session database and several other functions.

The module is compliant with IP Multimedia Subsystem architecture and TISPAN (Telecoms and Internet converged Services and Protocols for Advanced Networks) architecture for wireline networks.

Interest in Tazz’s products is mainly found in Europe at the moment, where they’re being sold as a way to manage VOIP and video-on-demand services, the company said. But Dunn expects American broadband providers to embrace Tazz’s products eventually as a way to “intelligently deal with video-on-demand rather than just throw capacity at the problem.”

Citing what he observed to be a quadrupling of requests for information and proposals this year applicable to Tazz’s gear, Dunn said, “This market is just starting to happen.”