Hosted VoIP

Nortel (News - Alert) and GENBAND announced they are joining forces to offer carriers a cost effective way of quickly migrating to an IP core, while allowing them to maintain their traditional deployed base of POTS service customers.

 

Nortel will resell, distribute and support GENBAND’s (News - Alert) G6 Universal Media Gateway and G2 Compact Media Gateway (News - Alert), which were announced last month. These media gateways complement the existing capabilities of Nortel’s CS 2000 and CS 1500, which already migrate existing line equipment from both the Nortel DMS-100 and DMS-10.

 

GENBAND’s media gateways, when coupled with Nortel’s Communication Server (CS) 2000 and CS 1500 are designed to enable seamless transition to VoIP for regional carriers while extending Nortel’s migration capabilities to DCO and EWSD switches — legacy digital switching solutions, which are still widely deployed in today’s carrier telephone systems.

 

The Nortel/GENBAND solution allows carriers to reuse their existing proprietary peripheral equipment rather than necessitating a full replacement of the entire TDM office.

 

"One of the fundamental building blocks in next-generation networks is migrating customers from legacy voice services to more advanced VoIP and SIP applications such as fixed mobile convergence," said Akshay Sharma, research director, Gartner (News - Alert), Carrier Network Infrastructure, in a statement. "Cost effective solutions for transformation to VoIP are essential for carriers to meet growing demands for the newest voice applications."

 

According to Alf Decardenas, general manager of Nortel’s Carrier Multimedia networks group, “VoIP and SIP and IP multimedia enable a vast range of applications and money making opportunities. Video, fixed/mobile convergence, Web services, etc…” “But,” he continued, “you can’t attack this opportunity and all the capabilities without first upgrading the carrier’s base.”

 

According to Decardenas, solutions like this allow carriers to offer up all the new capabilities as well as take care of their existing base.

 

Nortel and GENBAND completed a series of interoperability tests last year, focusing on H.248 and line/trunk capabilities.

 

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