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Networks & Infrastructure
GLOBALCOMM: VoIP Aimed at Small & Midsize Carriers
New Nortel Softswitch Also Lays Foundation for Future IMS Elements
by Jim Barthold
Nortel is tossing a new product into GlobalComm that’s
intended to kill two strategies at once. The new
Communication Server 1500 (CS 1500) product is targeting
small-medium carriers who may not have had access to IP-
based telephony in the past and it’s laying a foundation for
future IMS-based services.
“We are taking all the lessons learned from the deployment
of VoIP technology over the last four years and putting them
back into a solution targeted at small-medium carriers,” said
Rob Scheible, senior manager, voice-over-IP and multimedia
marketing at Nortel.
The target audience is as diverse as the product.
“We’re focusing it for greenfield, for customers that want to
do long distance, for customers that want to do class 5, for
customers that want to do broadband, fiber-to-the-premises,
IPTV with integrated voice,” Scheible said. “This is fully SIP-
based but it also supports all the existing technologies and
all of Nortel’s line units and remotes.”
The greenfield customers, he said, are the primary targets.
“It might be a company that’s a broadband company today
and they want to offer voice and multimedia services on top
of that,” he said. “It might be a cable company with
broadband access that wants to add voice-over-broadband on
top of that.”
Or it might just be an existing service provider that’s moving
to VoIP and looking to modernize its equipment.
Whatever the case, the new softswitch has one element that
appears crucial to any new telecommunications technology: a
link to IMS.
“It’s an IMS-ready solution so we have laid out our strategy
for how this product will evolve into an IMS network,” Scheible
said.
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