CTIA: Accuris adds FMC to roaming platform

Mobile roaming solutions provider Accuris is launching at CTIA Wireless a new session initiation protocol-infused version of its AccuRoam platform that effectively turns its roaming management platform into a standards-based fixed/mobile convergence gateway.

Accuris has made its name in pure-cellular roaming, producing the first GSM-to-CDMA handoff solution in 2004. But by retooling its core product with an SIP stack, Accuris is essentially creating a universal translator that will allow carriers to extend cellular services to any IP-based network. Accuris Chief Technology Officer Louis Corrigan said this is not your mother's fixed/mobile convergence solution: it goes far beyond the voice capabilities touted in unlicensed mobile access (UMA) solutions. Since AccuRoam was designed primarily as a roaming solution allowing customers to register on their home networks across any other cellular network, voice, data and SMS all come with the package. They are extended across Wi-Fi and WiMAX networks--limited only by the radio capabilities of the phone, Corrigan said.

"We're not concerned only with voice," Corrigan said. "We feel that a FMC solution should be as broad as it possibly can be."

In addition, the management capabilities of its roaming broker and profile platforms will also be extended across other networks. AccuRoam allows a home carrier to dictate preferences for its customers roaming other networks: limiting traffic on some partner carriers' networks while favoring preferred carriers. While the new solution is SIP-based, it is not necessarily an IP multimedia subsystem solution, Corrigan said. SIP acts as the universal language that allows AccuRoam to communicate with other IP networks, but it performs the SIP to SS7 conversion necessary to communicate with the home carrier's legacy mobile switching center. As carriers migrate to IMS architecture, however, the transaction between the roaming gateway and the core become all the more fluid though, allowing AccuRoam to extend more services beyond the confines of the home network, Corrigan said.

Accuris has OEM agreements with LogicaCMG and HP to resell AccuRoam.