VocalTec moves to SIP

VocalTec Communications introduced a SIP-based softswitch architecture today designed in part to get the company further into the domestic long-distance market.

The Essentra platform integrates with media gateway solutions to provide a migration from the current PSTN architecture. VocalTec, which has won much of its business overseas, is clearly aiming the new platform at carriers carrying more domestic traffic who have yet to make the jump from circuit-switched to packet-based infrastructures.

As part of the new platform, the company is also emphasizing a de-centralized architecture. Most softswitches manage all of their media gateways in a centralized fashion, said Ari Rabban, vice president of corporate development and marketing for VocalTec.

“In our architecture, we divided the call control portion of the switch,” he said. “The centralized portion then has all the information about the network. It offers a lot more flexibility.”

The announcement of the new softswitch comes one week after the company said it signed a joint marketing and product alliance with next-gen switch vendor Telica. Telica, which has been targeting the U.S. Tier-1 market, will get access to a number of international accounts where VocalTec has had its greatest success, while VocalTec gets a credible domestic partner.

"We approached Telica and they had a few opportunities,” said Rabban. “[Telica has] the highest density next generation switch in the industry and it’s the only one that supports IP, ATM and TDM. We wanted it primarily for the voice-over-IP solution because that also allows us to offer other applications that we don’t support directly, like TDM tandem and Internet offload.”