Beyond softswitch circles, another group of vendors is positioning to offer platforms for packetized local voice applications. But these companies are coming at it from a slightly different angle.
While most softswitch vendors' focus to date has been solely on the Internet offload and "voice over X" issue, companies like Taqua Systems Inc. (www.taqua.com), Telica Inc. (www.telica.com) and Santera Systems Inc. (www.santera.com) are offering multiservices switches that promise circuit-, packet- and cell-based solutions in a single offering.
Taqua, for its part, has a Class 5 alternative it calls the OCX, which has integrated softswitch functionality. By the end of this month, Taqua expects to introduce a SIP softswitch interface on the OCX; in the third quarter, a T3 TDM interface will be added; and an ATM OC-3 interface is expected to be online by the end of this year.
Telica, meanwhile, recently added voice packet telephony support to its Plexus 9000 switch, which supports TDM, voice over ATM and VoIP for both Class 4 and 5 applications. "Telica's Plexus lets carriers do next-gen as TDM tandem, and then over time migrate to packet," says Ali Kafel, Telica's vice president of marketing. "For Verizon, they'll initially do packet with ATM," realizing a 70 percent savings vs. a Class switch. KMC Telecom Inc. (www.kmctelecom.com) is now using the Plexus 9000 for TDM only services in 37 U.S. cities, says Kafel, but can use the same platform to offer packet-based services in the future.
According to Kafel, Telica's switch offers 10 times the density in the same footprint as the Sonus Networks Inc. (www.sonusnetworks.com) solution. Unlike the Sonus and other softswitch-based solutions that are more distributed, the Telica solution, which runs on proprietary hardware, has functions such as call control, signaling gateway and media gateway on the switch, Kafel says.
And Santera recently unveiled a softswitch that it says can scale far larger than any such next-generation solution on the market today. SanteraOne includes a media gateway, media gateway controller, signaling gateway, element management system and application server.
"We can have from a single softswitch support up to 64 media gateways. Or can have up to 32 softswitches in a single switching system. So as your call processing needs increase in the network, you can add media gateways as needed and do load balancing across them," says Kevin Grove, director of product marketing at the 2-year-old company.
A single shelf on the media gateway can support 56,000 DS-0s, says Grove, noting that the nearest competition can only do 36,000.
"We have both a TDM and packet fabric in our product, so we can do 80 redundant OC-3 ATM interfaces on a platform. That's in one shelf. But we can do 3.6 million DS-0s in 64 shelves or 21 racks. That's voice," says Grove. "We do up to 12.5 gigabits of ATM per shelf. That's data."
The solution can handle Class 4, 5 and 3 switching; IP, ATM and frame relay; and voice over broadband. In addition to including new protocols such as media gateway control (MEGACO), SIP, MPLS and VoDSL, SanteraOne also supports legacy requirements including GR-303, location number portability, 300 Class 5 features and transaction capabilities application part (TCAP). Other vendors are providing mostly point solutions that address just a single application, he says.
"We're more than just a softswitch. We do call processing and the signaling gateway that does SS7 signaling, primary-rate interface (PRI), any to any kind of signaling," says Grove. Santera's application server, meanwhile, enables customers to develop their own features via extensible markup language (XML), for example, and allows for the hosting of "off board" application servers, he adds.
As of March, the company was in beta trials with two customers, which it declined to name. It expected to make customer announcements and talk about interoperability with other vendors in the first quarter.
