Vendors IP-Enable Network Equipment

Because older proprietary wireless networks are expensive to customize and limited in the services and devices they can support, IP-based networks have become the savior for optimizing individual networks, converging multiple networks and speeding value-added, airtime-eating applications. A number of vendors at Supercomm introduced new IP-based products to drive their IP messages home.

Lucent Technologies introduced MyNetWorks, an IP-based multimedia software application for carriers that allows their subscribers to prioritize and filter their voice, multimedia, e-mail and fax calls and messages. Using a personalized Web page or voice interface, subscribers control how and when people reach them.

MyNetWorks uses an IP-distributed architecture employing Java software language and the CORBA software standard. With this platform, software vendors can write applications using distributed network resources such as speech-recognition processors without having to deal with the complexities of the network.

The foundation for Lucent's MyNetWorks system is "e-Me," an electronic personification of the subscriber. This feature intuitively filters information based on a contact list, schedule and a user-prescribed set of rules. E-Me "learns" how the user communicates and recommends rules to prioritize communications.

MyNetWorks can synchronize users' databases of contacts with personal digital assistants (PDAs), personal information- management systems, portable desktop management devices and network databases. MyNet-Works also serves as a communications component to Lucent's Zingo portal, a gateway to the Internet designed to enable subscribers to access personalized information using their wireless phones and PDAs.

This type of development provides a "great segue from 2G to 3G," according to Dick Snyder, Lucent business development director.

Snyder said there is "a lot of latent stuff out there" that needs to be pushed so it can break free. For example, he points to short message service as being "sorely underutilized." Part of it is the limitation of 2-way messaging, but part of it is the lack of marketing and education regarding the benefits.

Snyder sees the marriage of MyNetWorks and Zingo as the ideal communications portal. With this platform, he said Lucent begins to "wireless-enable everything." One wireless-enabled application of the future that Snyder is excited about is home security. Subscribers will be able to check their alarm systems while away and use Web cameras to see who's lurking around. Snyder said these applications "suck up airtime and increase customer loyalty."

During the show, Motorola and Sun Microsystems signed a non-exclusive 10-year strategic technology agreement allowing Motorola to deliver IP-based, high-availability network servers, base-station controllers and base stations for wireless networks.

The architecture includes customer hardware from Motorola's Network Solutions Sector, Motorola Computer Group's CPX8216 computing platform, Sun's ChorusOS real-time operating system, Solaris operating environment, Java Dynamic Management software kit and high-availability and IP services.

The kingpin vendor of unified network strategy, Nortel, focused its announcements on enterprises, introducing 11 products and enhancements. According to Jim Long, Nortel president of Enterprise Solutions, "Carrier services are becoming part of the enterprise. You can't tell where the carrier ends and the enterprise begins."

Nortel provides enterprises with solutions founded on its Internet Communications Architecture. It plans to merge the standards, simplicity and connectivity of the corporate Internet with the reliability, quality and capacity of the classic business communications systems.

Excel showed its EXS Media Gateway, an IP-telephony media gateway, supporting up to 3,840 voice over IP (VoIP) ports in one cabinet. With the combination of the EXS platform and Excel application development partners' enhanced services, network operators can IP-enable their networks to deliver customer services such as unified messaging, IP-based conferencing, operator services and e-commerce.

Excel's Voice Data Access Concentrator is a modular IP packet engine interface card that can provide 160 channels of VoIP over dual 100MB Ethernet interfaces when inserted into Excel's carrier-class EXS platform. With its IP initiatives, Excel and partners such as Priority Call Management expect to meet the demands of the next-generation provider for integrated services and the needs of the end user.

"IP technology is much more than a transport device -- it allows carriers to offer new and differentiated services today," said Robert Madonna, Excel president & CEO.