Magellan explores intelligent network market

Continuing its move into new markets, Magellan Network Systems announced a new system designed to oust expensive intelligent network services. Mariner helps competitive local exchange carriers and green field interexchange carriers quickly develop and deploy value-added services.

A key advantage to the system-which took three years to develop-is its transport-independent architecture that allows for easy migration from the public switched telephone network to a hybrid or pure Internet protocol (IP) network.

"Voice over IP is not big yet, but it will be in the near future," said Jeff Paine, director of marketing at Magellan. "Mariner will provide seamless migration to IP and it's completely network-agnostic."

The Mariner system includes switches, enhanced voice services, a service creation environment and customer care and billing. It is designed to let carriers quickly develop and customize voice services such as prepaid and postpaid phone cards, unified messaging, international callback and long-distance resale.

While most intelligent network services require costly third-party development, Mariner is designed to help carriers nimbly respond to competitors' new offerings. "Our tool allows them to continually-and easily-modify their value-added services to differentiate themselves," said Paine.

"Mariner will be attractive to competitive LECs because of its portability and platform independence," said Joe Skorupa, director of switching and routing at RHK. "Magellan has been a player in the value-added software business for a long time, and they are staying focused in that area. With Mariner, companies can easily move into the new IP voice infrastructure. It's easy to program new services, and it's a nice protection investment due to the scalability of the system."