Leap expands IP core

Adds more Genband, Acme Packet gear as footprint, traffic expands

As Leap Wireless grows, so does its IP network. The operator of the Cricket Communications service had added Genband’s latest-generation wireless gateway and more-robust session border controllers from Acme Packet to its networks to meet increasing traffic demands as Leap adds customers and grows its footprint.

Leap originally deployed Acme’s Net-Net 4000 Session Director in 2006 to interconnect with other operators' networks via VoIP, but recently Leap has begun installing the Net-Net 9000 in multiple points-of-presence to meet increasing traffic demands. The Net-Net 9000 can handle as many 128,000 media sessions simultaneously as opposed to the 4000’s 32,000.

Genband, Leap’s softswitch provider, has begun deploying its G9 Converged Media Gateway in new Leap markets to complement the Genband C3 and 8000 series gateways already in the network. The gateways negotiate traffic between the legacy network and the IP network, but the G9 is much higher-throughput gateway that incorporates high-capacity signaling gateway functionality as well as additional technology tweak. The G9 supports Enhanced Variable Rate Codec (EVRC) over IP, which allows it to interface between multiple mobile switching centers from different vendors across the Leap network.

Leap currently uses the IP network for most of its long-distance traffic and all of its value-added services, such as voicemail, 3G data traffic, SMS and MMS. Leap vice president of engineering John Saboe said that Leap still has plenty of legacy equipment in its core from its original network builds, but as Leap expands to new markets more IP elements are added from the get go and legacy functions are replaced with IP. Leap’s first market launch, Chattanooga, Tenn., launched in 1999, now has IP Interconnect to and from the PSTN, Saboe said.

Though Leap is not a new customer and certainly not its largest, Genband continues to increase its global market share for wireless media gateways. Synergy estimated its 2007 market share at 24.3%, making it the world’s number-one supplier, just ahead of Huawei. In North America, Genband’s dominance is unquestioned. It controls three quarters of the wireless gateway market. That’s not a bad position to start from, considering Synergy expects the media gateway market to grow from a $360 million industry in 2008 to $2 billion in 2012.

Genband is also trying to leverage its wireless gateway clout in both wireline trunking and femtocells. According to Infonetics, Genband ranked No. 7 in trunk media gateway sales with 4% market share, but earlier this month Genband negotiated a deal to buy Nokia Siemens Network’s trunk gateway business for an undisclosed amount, adding another 3% market share to its total. In femtocells, Genband is positioning the same G9 platform it’s deploying in Leap’s network as a femtocell aggregation point that could manage the call traffic and signaling of thousands of home base stations.