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NewsGlobe: Today's News
BBWF: Italtel scoops IEC InfoVision award for "new product concept"
Underlines supplier's ambitions in the NGN services space
by Ken Wieland
Italtel, primarily associated with softswitches and systems
integration, is making inroads into the NGN services market. Its
first major NGN services initiative, The Service Box (TSB), a
software platform, received an InfoVision award today from the IEC,
the organizers of the BBWF event, in the “new product concept”
category.
“We don’t see this as just an add-on to our portfolio,” says Giorgio
Bertolina, Italtel’s recently appointed CEO. “This could become
a core part of our offering.”
TSB, which can work with any device (fixed or mobile), allows
operators to offer advanced communications services to consumer and
enterprise customers over a softswitch-based NGN architecture.
“If I wanted, say, to only receive calls at a certain time from my
wife, TSB would enable operators to give customers that kind of
service,” says Antonino D’Angelo, Italtel’s CTO, and who was
directly involved in developing TSB. “It also allows a
communications link to be set up automatically without the need for
anyone to initiate the call, which could be useful for audio
conferencing and video conferencing.”
Italtel is pitching TSB as a tool for service enablement, but it has
also come up with its own ideas about how it can be used. Telecom
Italia Mobile is using TSB to offer its “Second Life” service (a
concept thought of by Italtel), which allows mobile users to assume
a virtual identity (through the use of avatars) and make calls and
send texts without disclosing their mobile number.
“I see the biggest opportunity for TSB coming from the enterprise
and public sector,” adds Bertolina, “where there is not only a
strong desire for more cost-efficient use of communications [using
IP technology] but also to increase productivity.”
Italtel was not only the only winner in the “new product concept”
category. Alcatel-Lucent also received recognition for its 7705
service aggregation router (SAR), which forms part of the META
platform that Alcatel-Lucent unveiled yesterday (see
AlcaLu goes META about mobile backhaul).
The winners of the IEC Infovision awards in other categories also
reflected the growing momentum behind carrier Ethernet. Nokia
Siemens Networks won an award in the Network Core Innovation and
Advances category for its PBB-TE Carrier Ethernet Switches Product
Family, while Meriton Networks received recognition for its Carrier
Ethernet Transport (CET) approach. Its 7200 Optical Switching
Platform (OSP) won the IEC InfoVision Award for Metro Network
Technologies and Services.
For a full list of the IEC InfoVision awards winners for BBWF 2007,
go to http://www.webitpr.com/release_detail.asp?ReleaseID=6831.
Click here for complete coverage of Broadband World Forum Europe.
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