Fore product aims at carriers, ISPs

Fore Systems boosted its surprisingly strong showing in the carrier and Internet service provider market by acquiring Cadia Networks last week. At the same time, the vendor insisted that its relationship remains strong with Northern Telecom, which builds the core of Fore's ASX-1000 switch into its Magellan Vector product line.

The Andover, Mass.-based Cadia gives Fore Systems its first product packaged specifically for carriers-a multiservice adaptation platform (MSAP) that can handle any service on any port.

"With this solution, we can implement a single asynchronous transfer mode infrastructure and then offer video, frame relay, native ATM, Internet protocol, circuit emulation or carrier voice traffic over that unified infrastructure," said Dave Nelsen, senior director of the outbound technology group at Fore Systems, Warrendale, Pa. The net effect: Carriers should save money, time and space when they introduce new services. The MSAP products will be available in the second half of this year.

Rick Malone, principal at Vertical Systems Group, Dedham, Mass., believes the Cadia product has the potential to become the voice network's architecture as that network continues moving from circuit-switched to packet-based traffic. Besides the any-service, any-port feature, the Cadia platform offers high density-fitting 15,000 ports into a single rack-and is expected to cost less than half the per-port price of similar products now on the market.

Fore has been moving quietly but swiftly into the service provider market over the past year. A Vertical Systems study shows that the company, as a direct supplier, captured 16% of the carrier and ISP segments of the worldwide ATM service provider market in 1996-a fourfold increase over the previous year.

Ron McKenzie, Fore's vice president of marketing, said his company and Nortel can combine their strengths to offer both companies' products, depending upon a carrier's needs.

Fore's acquisition and Cascade Communications' recent acquisition of Sahara Networks (see story on page 40) are examples of equipment manufacturers providing more of an end-to-end solution for their carrier customers.

Ameritech and USN, a Chicago-based reseller of local exchange service, demonstrated a seamless operations support system last week that gives USN access to unbundled network elements of the Bell regional holding company.

Ameritech touted the system as an illustration of its commitment to supporting local exchange competition and its compliance with the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996. The announcement's timing also coincides with the company's plan to apply for certification as a long-distance company in Illinois later this month.

Certain elements of the OSS, including ordering and billing, have been in place since February 1996. The critical components of pre-ordering and service provisioning were completed only last month.

The new OSS capabilities-which will give USN and other competitive local exchange carriers immediate, interactive access to the same order entry and number assignment databases used by the Ameritech telcos-represent one of the first commercial applications of interface standards developed by the Alliance of Telecommunications Industry Solutions, as do those developed earlier in 1996. One of the key elements involves number portability: The OSS allows USN to access all available phone numbers in its service areas. Pre-assignment of NXX codes or number groups becomes unnecessary.

DEAL Boosts PREMISYS Products Premisys Communications has bought the rights to use Sonet and SDH-based technology from Positron Fiber Systems as building blocks for its next generation integrated access products. The first product, to debut at Supercomm in June, will be targeted at facilities-based carriers, will comply with Bellcore standards for CO and outside plant use, and is expected to support T-carrier, Sonet/SDH and asynchronous transfer mode in a single shelf. MSO MOVES AHEAD WITH ILLINOIS TELEPHONY PLAN Tele-Communications Inc. plans to launch telephony services this week in Arlington Heights, Ill., as part of its scaled-back entry into voice services. For the past year and a-half, service trials have been underway with TCI employees in the Chicago suburb.