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Mobile & Wireless
Acme Packet chases FMC
SBC vendor slides expertise from wireline to wireless
by Jim Barthold
Acme Packet is wading more deeply into wireless waters with
an expanded product family that includes a multiservice
security gateway (MSG), an integrated session border control-
security gateway and an ATCA blade platform.
The new products are “primarily geared at mobile operators
but really can be used by MVNOs or integrated fixed-mobile
operators,” said Kevin Mitchell, director of solutions marketing
at Acme Packet. “It’s a new product that makes use of our
existing hardware platforms and a new form factor ATCA
blade.”
The product family, he said, addresses the move by mobile
carriers to use less expensive IP-based technology to deliver
new services to run alongside wireline networks as part of an
FMC or as a complete fixed-mobile substitution (FMS) play
where the mobile phone replaces the conventional wireline
unit.
The MSG works within the IMS-centric tunnel termination
gateway (TTG) framework to connect SIP-based dual-mode
phones or SIP-based femtocells.
“Fixed-mobile substitution doesn’t work unless you get good
radio coverage. Femtocells fix that problem; dual-mode
handsets fix that problem,” he said.
Acme Packet is also going off script and addressing non-SIP-
based opportunities “where we’re not dealing with voice-over-
IP at all but tunneled GSM signaling, Mitchell said. This area
is “the unlicensed mobile access (UMA) scenario where you
have a UMA gateway that provides similar types of functions.
Even though we’ve been purely about SIP and interactive IP
communications, the incremental opportunity to address the
UMA opportunity which is getting extended life because of the
femtocells is being addressed with our MSG product.”
Acme Packet’s foundation of wireline SBC products makes it
easier to transition into the wireless space than vendors who
are coming from wireless to address the wireline aspects of
FMC, Mitchell said.
“There are a host of vendors out there that are specialized in
this and trying to move into the more difficult areas of
session border control. Magnitudes more work and resources
are required to add that kind of functionality to a TTG
product. We’re starting from the easy point,” he said.
They’re all starting from the starting point. Literally.
“The whole area, femtocells, dual-mode handsets is so early
… most of the opportunity is still ahead of all the player sin
this space. Because we’re coming at it from the more difficult
side of having developed session control … we have that
advantage,” he said.
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