International reach: Nortel offers gateway capabilities on long-distance switch

Carriers' growing interest in debit and prepaid calling cards spurred the Telephone Co. of Central Florida to deploy a combined international/tandem switching system that can provide enhanced services with public network-style scalability.

TCCF's three-year, $30 million contract with Northern Telecom, announced last week, marks the first commercial deployment of Nortel's DMS-Programmable Services Architecture technology. Nortel will supply TCCF with its DMS-250 SuperNode tandem, DMS-300/250 international gateway/tandem switching systems and its Total Network Solutions support services.

Before TCCF signed the deal, it couldn't find a scalable platform that would provide the enhanced services "in a fashion that we thought was necessary to stay in business, be profitable and remain for the long term," said Elder "Kip" Ripper, president and chief executive officer of TCCF.

The Orlando-based local exchange carrier initially reproduced its switching platforms to handle the traffic load, but Ripper remained dissatisfied with the PC-based solutions. "Without the scalability, you can't get the economies of scale and infrastructure you need to be in the business," he said.

It will first deploy the Nortel switching systems in Miami, followed by New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston by the end of 1998.

TCCF will target Bell companies, PTTs and smaller foreign competitors as potential customers for theservices it can provide via the Nortel platform.

TCCF's also hopes to offer international callback services, fax on demand, voice mail and least-cost routing to carriers that run their traffic across a TCCF switch.