|
Backoffice & OSS
Fixating on Fixed-Mobile Convergence
Reef Point’s New Product Aims for Single FMC Platform
by Jim Barthold
Reef Point Systems has spread out a blanket for any
technology that wants to participate in a fixed-mobile
convergence environment and invited service providers to join
the party with whatever IMS-based system they plan to use to
offer converged services.
The company’s Universal Convergence Gateway (UCG)
provides a control point that consolidates all major networks
and adheres to all major IP infrastructure standards. If it’s IP-
based, the company said, it will run across the UCG.
“We have the ability to take traffic from many of the
standards of fixed-mobile convergence, whether they’re
mobile IMS, fixed IMS, PacketCable IMS, 3GPP, unlicensed
mobile access, wireless LAN interworking, WiMAX – whatever
the standards are – and use the same solution to be able to
terminate those users and pass them off into the applications
core,” said Cam Cullen, ReefPoint's vice president of product
management.
Subscribers’ get access to the converged network “regardless
of how or what device they’re accessing it from or what
network they’re accessing it from,” Cullen said.
This, he pointed out, gives service providers a lasso to grab
subscribers who might be wandering off their broadband
networks to voice applications being delivered by over-the-top
providers like Vonage.
“The goal, from our perspective, is to allow service providers
to be able to compete effectively and install these systems in
their networks so they can more cost-effectively deliver the
service to a residential consumer,” he said.
The UCG sits in the IP layer so when a subscriber enters the
network via an FMC effort it’s the first device that’s touched.
Since the unit is capable of handling all types of IMS-based
transport, it leaves open the possibility of what network the
subscribers will use. Cullen is confident that there won’t be any
disruptions as IMS specifications change as they are doing on
an almost daily basis.
“These standards are constantly evolving but none of them
are changing so rapidly that you can’t take a platform that
you’re using one day and have it become totally irrelevant
later on,” Cullen said.
While Reef Point has no announced customers for the service,
it has been working on an OEM basis with Alcatel in early trial
deployments and “will have some specific customer
announcements in the next several months,” he concluded.
|
