Lucent, Cisco support mobile VoIP

Lucent Technologies and Cisco Systems said they have entered mobile operator trials for a carrier-class voice over IP solution they created together as part of the groundbreaking marketing and development agreement the two traditional competitors signed last year.

The offering, part of Lucent’s recently announced Accelerate Voice over IP Solutions portfolio, combines the Lucent Softswitch (LSS) and Cisco MGX 8000 Series Media Gateways. Lucent has been re-selling the Cisco gateways since January 2003, when the companies forged an initial agreement to work together that was augmented later in the year with a plan to co-develop technology to meet mobile operators’ VoIP needs.

Lucent's Accelerate strategy focuses on convergence of voice and multimedia services.

"This successful integration of the LSS and Cisco MGX 8000 Series Media Gateways puts us in an ideal position to meet mobile operators' growing requirement to deliver converged IP-based services--such as VoIP, high-speed data and multimedia communications--across 3G UMTS and CDMA2000 and CDMA450 mobile networks," said John Marinho, vice president of offer management with Lucent's Mobility Solutions Group.

"Mobile operators gain significant operational savings and service efficiencies with a consolidated packet network," added Kambiz Hooshmand, vice president and general manager of Cisco's Carrier Core and Multiservice Business Unit.

Lucent and Cisco first tested VoIP and VoATM as a joint solution last year, completing mobile-to-mobile and mobile-to-public network calls in Lucent's Lisle, Ill., lab and in Cisco's San Jose, Calif., lab. The companies used the H.248 media gateway control protocol, which allows a softswitch, serving as the media gateway controller, to communicate with media gateways that are used to convert data from the format required for a circuit-switched network to that required for a packet-switched network.