Feb 14, 2006 1:39 PM,

3GSM: Nortel gets second chance at Cingular 3G network

By Kevin Fitchard

BARCELONA, SPAIN--After 18 months, Nortel Networks has finally gotten a piece of the much-coveted Cingular 3G contract. Instead of a radio access contract, though, Nortel has sold its next-generation mobile switching platform to Cingular, making the vendor the single biggest core vendor across Cingular’s GSM and UMTS networks.

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Nortel will supply its 3GPP release 4-compliant mobile switching center for Cingular’s UMTS packet core and its 2G GSM network. The MSC is actually an upgraded version of the MSC that Nortel provided AT&T Wireless, which was in the process of upgrading its core before it was acquired. Cingular had continued to install the switches after the merger, but only the former AT&T Wireless network, choosing to maintain its legacy equipment in the original Cingular footprint.

When Cingular named its 3G vendors in 2004, Nortel was absent from the list even though it was one of the vendors that had built Cingular’s original 3G markets when they were owned by AT&T. Since then, Nortel has been fighting to reclaim its spot on the carrier’s prime vendor list, and today’s three-year contract is the vendor’s redemption, said Richard Lowe, president of mobility and converged core solutions at Nortel.

“From the start, it was up to us to prove to Cingular that we had the world’s leading product for the core,” Lowe said. “I don’t know if they ever expected this day to happen, but I never gave up.”

The new MSC is first built on the Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (ATCA), a hardware standard designed to promote interoperability with different network components. While the MSCs will function as R4 switches, the standardized hardware framework can be upgraded with new software in the future turning converting them to full-fledged mobile softswitches or the call session control function elements of an IP Multimedia Subsystem network.

Nortel did not name any financial terms to the deal. In addition to Nortel, Lucent Technologies and Alcatel are supplying MSCs for Cingular’s UMTS packet core.