Telcordia Softswitch Gets SIP

Telcordia Technologies Inc. (Morristown, NJ -- 973-829-2000, www.telcordia.com) announced in September that its Call Agent Class 5 softswitch now supports SIP interfaces. The enhanced Telcordia Call Agent will initially support SIP-based applications for emerging PC to PSTN and PSTN to PC applications. The release supports third-party call control applications for PC control of telephone features such as directory features, calling name delivery and call initiation. In addition, third-party call control can be initiated from Internet servers for click-to-dial applications and from wireless PDAs. Future releases of SIP-enabled softswitches will include support for SIP-T to enable softswitch-to-softswitch handoffs and support for SIP-enabled Application Servers.

Oresis Acquires Vsys Softswitch

Oresis Communications (Beaverton, OR -- 503-533-0717, www.oresis.com), acquired softswitch technology and intellectual property from Vsys (Denver, CO -- 303.409.7900, www.vsys.com) late this past October. As a result, Oresis is offering a packet voice solution built from a combination of the ISIS-700 media gateway and the newly acquired Vsys softswitch. The Vsys softswitch has an extensive set of Class 4 and Class 5 voice switching features and has proven interoperability with numerous external softswitches and application servers. The media gateway and softswitch will communicate through an open standards-based MGCP/H.248 interface.

Sonus Partnership Gains New Ground

Sonus Networks (Westford, MA -- 978-692-8999, www.sonusnet.com), recently announced the addition of eleven new members to its Open Services Partner AllianceSM (OSPA). The organization, though clearly centered around Sonus offerings, has nevertheless gained significant industry momentum, with membership of more than 150 leading independent vendors. For those watching the softswitch market, the OSPA is interesting because of its laboratory testing of next-gen equipment interoperability.

The inclusion of new partners from Canada, England and South Korea also illustrates how the OSPA continues to expand around the globe. The OSPA has other partners based in Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Japan, and Singapore.

Joining the OSPA are the following: ADTRAN Inc. (www.adtran.com) of Huntsville, AL; Aperto Networks Inc. (www.apertonetworks.com) of Milpitas, CA; CosmoCom Inc. (www.cosmocom.com) of Melville, NY; CyberTel Inc. (www.cybertel.com) of Middletown, NJ; Fastcomm Communications Corporation (www.fastcomm.com) of Dulles, VA; inPACT Technologies Ltd. (www.inpact-tech.co.uk) of Denbighshire, England; jNetX (www.jnetx.net) of Dallas, TX; Kenetec Inc. (www.kenetec.com) of Naugatuck, CT; Mitel Networks (www.mitel.com) of Ottawa, Canada;Polycom, Inc. (www.polycom.com) of Milpitas, CA; and Polypix Inc. (www.polypix.com) of Seoul, South Korea.

CopperCom Ships 50th Softswitch

In a market where there are still relatively few full-fledged field deployments of softswitches, CopperCom (Baca Raton, FL - 561-322-4000, www.coppercom.com) announced it had shipped its 50th softswitch for use in the public telephone network. The customer that bought No. 50, Rio Communications, is a full service telephone company delivering high-speed voice and data. Rio plans to use CopperCom's local exchange softswitch system to deliver voice services as it expands into new markets in Oregon and Washington.

CopperCom's softswitch system is comprises three primary elements: 1) the CopperController softswitch -- including call control, line- and trunk-side features, and feature creation with Call Policy Markup Language; 2) the CSX 2100 media gateway -- switching and media conversion platform; 3) and the CopperCommander provisioning and management platform -- all of which appear to the service provider network as a single system.

The CALEA Era Has Arrived

If you want to do next-gen comms, you've now got to do CALEA. The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994 requires wireless and wireline telephone carriers to ensure that they have the technical capability to allow law enforcement authorities to monitor all forms of communication once appropriate legal authority has been obtained for wiretapping or electronic surveillance. The compliance deadline for wireline, cellular and broadband personal communications services (PCS) was November 19, 2001.