Cascade showers BANM with ATM

Bell Atlantic Nynex Mobile announced last week that it is using CBX 500 asynchronous transfer mode switches from Cascade Communications in its code division multiple access network backbone.

ATM is the technology of choice to interconnect the mobile switching centers (MSCs) in the Lucent Technologies CDMA architecture that BANM is using.

"What we're doing with ATM is very basic," said John Williams, member of technical staff for new technologies at BANM. "We're taking pre-packetized voice and sending it through an ATM pipe.

ATM connections facilitate inter-MSC soft handoff, which is crucial in a CDMA network such as BANM's that will eventually serve a broad region and use multiple switches. "We needed ATM switches to make that happen," Williams said.

Using ATM also provides a more economic alternative, said Chris Baldwin, business manager for ATM switching products at Cascade. "They could have put in a lot of leased lines, but that would be expensive," he said. "A switched network allows you to save on line costs.

The contract-along with others that Cascade is not ready to publicize-is an indication of ATM's expanding role in voice transmission, Baldwin said. "This is a real bellwether in that ATM is being used in a service scale offering of voice, not just on a private network," he said.