Gabriel Communications Inc. (www.gabrielcom.net) reached a $40-million, multi-year agreement with Tachion Networks Inc. (www.tachion.com) to purchase a "Collapsed Central Office" system that removes the need for standard Class 5 voice switches. Gabriel believes that use of this equipment will cut the costs of opening new voice and data central offices by a factor of five to 10 times.
Anchored by the Fusion 5000 voice and data broadband platform, Tachion's system integrates more than half a dozen standard CO boxes into one. These include circuit and cell switching; IP packet and ATM cell routing; SONET transport; and circuit- and cell-based signaling, including Signaling System 7 (SS7) and ATM Private Network to Network Interface (PNNI) signaling, with inclusion of Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP) for packet-to-PSTN network softswitch signaling due in late summer.
"We believe that Tachion's Collapsed Central office architecture can allow us to deploy a more cost-efficient alternative to the multi-device, ATM/Class 5-based architecture we are currently using and can facilitate a more rapid market expansion," David Solomon, Gabriel's vice chairman and CEO, said in a statement.
Where the typical upfront costs of a traditional CO - with circuit, frame relay and ATM switches, edge routers, digital cross-connects and voice/data gateways - range from $1.6 million to $2.4 million, "we can open a city for $250,000," said Chuck Harris, vice president of marketing and business development for Tachion. Tachion also won a $25-million purchase from CLEC TelePacific Communications (www.telepacific.com) in January.
Currently operating in seven markets throughout Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Ohio and Oklahoma, Gabriel will use the Fusion 5000 platform to expand operations to Louisville and Lexington, Ky.; Indianapolis; and Akron, Cincinnati, Columbus and Dayton, Ohio, later this year.
Carriers can program the switch to provide circuit voice, frame relay, or ATM service on any port down to the 64-kilobit-per-second (DS-0) level. On the voice side, the Fusion 5000 system supports up to 20 Centrex services, as well as emergency 911 and other call features. Tachion has published programming interfaces to its switch for third-party feature creation. As technology for outboard call control servers, gatekeepers and signaling gateways evolves, the switch's signaling systems will interoperate with them, Harris said.
For now, said Gabriel's Solomon, the platform "can enable us to roll out more services to more cities and customers in less time with less money, a crucial factor in this increasingly competitive telecommunications landscape."
