Interoperable multiservice switches on the horizon: MCI WorldCom, Cisco and Bellcore lead new coalition

A group of 14 telecom companies have joined forces to create the Multiservice Switching Forum. Led by MCI WorldCom, Cisco Systems and Bellcore, the forum's charter is to develop an open systems standard that enables interoperability between vendor switching systems and feature sets. MSF proposed working groups addressing architecture, switch control and voice.

The impetus for creating an open standard is the desire to decrease the number of service interfaces at the switching and access layers, said Morgan Littlewood, MSF board member and director of solutions marketing with Cisco's multiservice switching business unit.

MSF's concept is to re-engineer the central office by separating the "switching fabric from the feature fabric from the management fabric," said Frank Dzubeck, president of Communications Network Architects. In today's CO environment, all those components are integrated in Class 5 switches.

The MSF specification will "allow a vendor to plug components into other vendor's systems," Littlewood said. Voice, frame relay and Internet protocol shells can be connected independently to a switching fabric, and controllers from each will be recognized.

Not only does an open systems approach save hardware, software and transport costs, but "it also drives revenue if we can get to market much sooner," said Fred Briggs, chief technical officer of MCI WorldCom. Having a standard implementation means carriers can differentiate based on services.

"Where you compete is at the application layer," Briggs said. "If you have a common platform and a common infrastructure, it opens up the market to more competition."

The embedded switch vendors have the most to lose, but customers are forcing them to act, Dzubeck said. MSF could deliver tremendous benefits to customers and carriers. The danger is that the forum might promote the interests of initial leaders.

"I've got a wait-and-see attitude," Dzubeck said. "Is this a bunch of vendors railroading their concepts of life?"

But Frank D'Amelio, vice president of product management marketing for Lucent's switching and access group, is upbeat. Voice switch vendors can leverage their embedded base and expertise to the forum, he said. Instead of keeping the three components "surgically separate," he sees MSF creating a transparent gateway linking circuit-switched and packet networks.

The forum hopes to have a standard in about nine months and will incorporate work from other groups such as the ATM Forum and the Frame Relay Forum.

Other MSF members include AT&T, Alcatel, Ascend Com-munications, BT, Fujitsu Network Communications, Lucent, Nortel, Siemens, Telecom Italia, Telia AB and U S West.