With more and more Tier 2 and Tier 3 telcos acquiring mobile spectrum, Taqua LLC has added mobility to its list of access networks it supports on its Class 4/5 switch. The platform, Taqua Mobile Works, also has the added benefit of enabling integrated fixed-mobile convergence services.
“An increasing number of rural and smaller telcos have acquired wireless assets or have won spectrum in the 700MHz auction,” said Scott Weidenfeller, CMO at Taqua. “They’ve been coming to us asking for a way to accommodate that, because essentially their switching options consist of big, expensive switches from the big vendors, costing millions of dollars, and a lot of the smaller guys just can’t afford that.”
Accordingly, Taqua has partnered with Mavenir Systems Inc., which provides service delivery network technology, to allow smaller operators to deliver advanced applications across any wireline and wireless network infrastructure including GSM/CDMA, 2G, 3G and 4G.
Taqua's Mobile Interface Card can plug into the same Taqua 700 switching system a telco may be using to support its wireline and VoIP traffic. It’s also coupled with Mavenir's mOne convergence platform, and includes all functions normally provided by a standalone mobile switching center (MSC), acting as a wireless media gateway with call control, home location register (HLR), session management and subscriber authentication, service adaptation and protocol interworking, and multidomain resource management.
Being able to provide all those functions on the same platform as small and medium carriers are using for wired traffic has benefits from an operational perspective, said Weidenfeller. “They can collapse everything down to a single IP core platform, and that saves immensely in maintenance, updates and monitoring, for instance.”
Weidenfeller said the ability to launch integrated services is a nice perk for customers, too. “The main thing they’re interested in is the opex reduction and cost savings,” he noted. “But they’re interested in delivering enhanced, sticky services, too. It gives them a lot of options so that it’s not just the large carriers with this kind of capability.”
The T7000 can be configured to replace any Class 4/5 end office switch and simultaneously deliver TDM and IP services. By introducing a mobile interface card, the same system can deliver mobility services from a single 17x24-inch gateway-like chassis shelf. Taqua's "switch-on-a-card" design places all the functions of a Class 5 switch, IP gateway or mobile switching center on a single circuit pack, and each shelf can be configured with any variety of circuit packs depending upon the service provider’s requirements.
