THE FUTURE AS SEEN THROUGH TECHNOLOGY

NO GRIEF

Much has been made of the sharp reductions in 2002 capital spending planned by major telecom carriers. But Van Phung, head of product line management for Siemens' Surpass business unit in the U.S., believes plenty of money will be available for innovative vendors with disruptive technology.

“No one cuts capex at the expense of the customer base or revenue stream,” he said. “When budgets get tight, vendors have to figure out where the problems are and what the carrier needs to solve them.”

According to Phung, carriers today are struggling with what to do about the Class 4 tandem switch. Packet-based networks and the growth of wireless networks have exhausted switch capacity. Complicating matters is Lucent Technology's decision to discontinue the largest Class 4 switch on the market, the 4ESS.

Siemens' solution is the Surpass HiQ next-generation tandem softswitch that — through the use of access gateways and the sharing of SS7 point code — can be partitioned in such a way that it “behaves on the SS7 network like 256 virtual switches,” said Phung.

But that's only part of the story: The softswitch also shares the SS7 point code with the existing switch. “We overlay the existing 120,000 trunks with a 40,000 trunk gateway,” Phung said. “This is the least disruptive solution for the customer. There is no grief.”

The ability to connect the existing Class 4 switch to the softswitch eases the migration path because all feature sets can be carried forward — an important capability, Phung said, because “if the existing switch has greater capability than the softswitch, there would be no value.”

The softswitch is currently being field-tested by two interexchange carriers and one cable operator.
— Glenn Bischoff
www.icn.siemens.com

PASS THE BUCK

For ISPs and carriers looking to save cash, Illuminet's Internet Offload Signaling Service may be just what the economist ordered.

Illuminet outsources all SS7- and IP-based signaling and call control. Designed to accommodate from 2500 to 200,000 subscribers, the service routes dial-up Internet traffic to remote access servers (RASs). The Internet offload service is enabled by the ipVerse ControlSwitch, which interfaces with Illuminet's SS7 network.

Internet sessions are terminated via a service provider's own line on the RAS. Illuminet supplies the softswitch equipment, management and 24-hour monitoring while the carrier or ISP provides intermachine trunks and RASs.

“The way the market is right now, everybody that either hosts ISPs or is an ISP is really looking at ways they can cut their monthly costs,” said Lori Mullane, Illuminet's senior manager of business development for next-generation services. “And the cost of the lines that they have in order to even gain access to their subscribers is one of the largest chunks of their expenditures.”

Which is why the company's service may appeal to a broad customer base of ISPs and carriers. Mullane said providers can potentially save up to 50% because they do not have to deploy their own softswitches or make capital and infrastructure investments.
— Amalia D. Parthenios
www.illuminet.com