Caerus’ Shawn Lewis |
They say you can’t come home again. Not true for Shawn Lewis. The designer of key components of the softswitch during his time at competitive service provider XCOM Technologies Inc. in the 1990s, Lewis now heads up Caerus Inc., a company that is working to reinvent the softswitch and offer services based on its newly defined architecture.
Lewis is president and CEO of Caerus Inc., the holding company for three subsidiaries, including technology company Caerus Networks; Caerus Billing and Mediation; and next-generation wholesale service provider Volo Communications, which employs the technology of its two sister subsidiaries to deliver wholesale services.
The company decided to create its own softswitch platform for more flexibility, according to Lewis. “Communications has evolved since the creation of the softswitch, so we created a communications OS that allows us to connect to any device, whether it’s a traffic light or a telephone call,” he says.
He adds that most softswitches are based on automatic number identification, SIP or SS7 call flow models. Call flow models have trigger points that allow service providers to deliver services such as instant messaging and applications using presence and WAP technology, he says.
“But no one has all protocols integrated,” he adds. “We are event-based, so we can deal with any protocol.”
Because the switching platform works like an operating system, Lewis continues, Volo — the services arm of Caerus — allows carriers to have control over switching.
A cable company customer could, for example, create auto attendants through a Web interface, he explains. The company also provides customers with a custom programming language, he adds.
Volo sells transport, origination, termination, wholesale voice services, dialtone and IP services, as well as switch outsourcing to other service providers. The company, which runs its own MPLS backbone but leases the underlying transport from companies such as Level 3 Communications Inc. and MCI, launched its services in the United States late last year and expects to begin offering service on international direct routes in April.
Meanwhile, the billing part of Caerus provides public operators with support services, including billing, routing, customer service and 911.
Although the company had not publicly announced carrier customers as of mid- December, Lewis said he expected to announce 10 customers shortly and anticipated that Volo would be supporting at least 5 billion minutes of traffic a month on its next-generation network starting this quarter.
