Hosted VoIP

VoIP carrier ElephantTalk, a subsidiary of publicly-owned Elephant Talk Communication, Inc., has reportedly selected the Blueslice HLR with enhanced features to help it deliver a new GSM/WiMAX (News - Alert)/WiFi operation to its customers. ElephantTalk’s expansion into the mobile market will enhance the company’s existing fixed and VoIP offerings.

Founded in 1994, ElephantTalk is a facility-based international long distance carrier with hubs in Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Boston, New York, Singapore and Beijing. As a licensed ISR carrier with its US based facilities, carrier interconnection, special termination arrangements and existing circuits between US and Hong Kong, the company aims to provide the best price and first-mover advantages for Hong Kong-based carriers.

ElephantTalk’s general strategy is to leverage its expertise and established relationships with carriers in the Asian-Pacific region to pursue early entry into selected deregulating markets. To accomplish this, it has signed service agreements and is currently implementing interconnections with top North American carriers like AT&T (News - Alert), WorldCom and Teleglobe for terminating their minutes in the Asia-Pacific region. A carrier of carriers, ElephantTalk provides international long distance to over 220 foreign countries through a flexible network comprised of resale arrangements with long distance providers, leased transmission facilities, various foreign termination relationships and international gateway switches.

Headquartered in Montreal, Canada, privately-held Blueslice Networks provides multi-profile subscriber management solutions for the Mobile, VoIP, FMC and M2M markets. The company’s solutions allow mobile service providers to delivering innovative and differentiated services and reduce operational costs, while at the same time controlling their principal asset, their subscriber base. Its Blueslice Converged Subscriber Platform 3000T is designed for GSM/GPRS/UMTS networks. A tightly integrated solution, it lets end-users access converged communication services seamlessly over any type of access with a single subscription and set of preferences. The company claims this carrier-grade open standard platform is the only converged HLR/AuC, HSS, SIP Registrar and SIP Redirect Server, which together enable universal mobility across all access networks.

With this platform, Blueslice can deliver next generation solutions to the world's leading mobile service providers, including wireless carriers, MVNOs, VoIP providers and alternate carriers. Its Home Location Register is a central database that contains details of each mobile phone subscriber that is authorized to use the core network. The next generation HLR also boasts features such as Advanced Low Cost Roaming, HLR/HSS-based Fixed Mobile Convergence (News - Alert) (FMC) and hosting functions. In particular, the Multi-IMSI capability will allow ElephantTalk to economically deploy a competitive global service.

ElephantTalk’s new mobile offering will also deliver WiFi (News - Alert) and WiMAX. This will allow enterprises, ISPs, and resellers to deliver converged mobile services - including full triple-play with content distribution from entertainment companies and advanced multimedia devices.

"ElephantTalk is already known as a provider of telecommunications services: we already have the interconnection agreements in place, the infrastructure backend installed, a distribution network, and the brand recognition. It only makes sense for us to expand into the mobile market and to do it as a global GSM and FMC player with control over our network," said Martin Zuurbier, COO and CTO of ElephantTalk, in a press release. "The Blueslice subscriber platform is the best solution that meets our requirements."

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Patrick Barnard is Associate Editor for Customer Interaction Solutions magazine and Assignment Editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit Patrick Barnard’s columnist page.