SWITCHES: Solutions for Small Markets

Service providers targeting small towns and rural communities across the
world face a common problem: how to offer a viable service (in new areas) and
get new value-added services to small communities in places where some kind of
basic telecom services are already being offered? The same is true for India
too.

While
the kind of business model a service provider follows is important in this
context, also important is the choice of the right technology or solutions.
Overall, most service providers want two things–any solution that they deploy
should involve low capex and opex (so that cost of failure is low) and the
solution should be scalable enough to let them start on a scale (starting low
should not mean too high per subscriber opex) they want and grow as the demand
grows. Here, we have listed solutions from three vendors who claim to address
the problem:

Lucent Technologies: The company recently introduced three new small
switching solutions specifically targeted at service providers who need less
than 5,000 lines. According to the vendor, service providers can use the
offerings–the VCDX 2400, VCDX 4700 and the 5E-XC Remote Line Unit–to
supplant existing switches that need replacement or to enter new markets to
provide residential and business voice services to small towns and rural
communities. It also claimed that the new solutions would make it possible for
service providers to provide advanced telecommunications services including IP
Centrex, Web-based contact centers and Internet Call Waiting to business and
residential customers in small communities. Both VCDX 2400 and VCDX 4700 provide
the service provider with turnkey solutions (hardware, software, engineering
services, installation services and program management services) and enable them
to serve approximately 2,400 and 4,700 subscribers respectively. These offerings
complement the current product models that serve up to 28,000 subscribers. The
5E-XC Remote Line Unit supports up to 3,000 subscribers and runs off a host
5E-XC switch. The remote line unit can now provide emergency standalone
capability, allowing the unit to continue to switch 911 and intra-community
calls if there’s an interruption in the line to the host switch.

Nortel Networks: Earlier, in December 2002, Nortel Networks, under its
network evolution roadmap for rural markets, had announced deployment of
additional functionality for the DMS-10, Succession Communications Server 2000–Compact,
Succession Media Gateway 9000, Passport 7480, and Pasport 15000 multiservice
switches. The additional functionalities, it is claimed, would offer service
providers in rural markets a logical, cost-effective evolution to voice over
packet, when ready, while still getting the latest and greatest revenue
enhancing feature sets for the existing TDM-based networks. With the migration
to a proven packet solution, rural subscribers can be offered the same
high-quality, high-speed Internet services available in neighboring urban
centers. The DMS-10 system is a carrier-class central office switching platform
offering service options ranging from simple dial tone to advanced voice and
data networking services. Designed for small to medium applications, the DMS-10
can provide 320 ISDN PRI links or more than 20,000 lines. When needed, the
DMS-10 can evolve from TDM to next-generation packet networking.

UTStarcom: UTStarcom’s IP-based mSwitch is a cost-effective, flexible, and
highly scalable switching infrastructure that supports voice and data services
over wireline and wireless networks. As the switch is highly scalable (it can be
deployed to support 10,000 to 10 million subscribers), service providers can
also try it out in rural areas and small towns. Service operators can also use
it to migrate their traditional voice-based TDM networks to next-generation,
IP-based packet switching architecture. By supporting PSTN and softswitch
protocols, the mSwitch seamlessly bridges the gap between existing
circuit-switched platform and next-generation packet-switched network
architecture.

The mSwitch is often bundled into UTStarcom’s IP-based Personal Access
System (iPAS) wireless-access network, which enables operators to offer a
complete set of wireline services while migrating to an IP-based wireless
network. However, the mSwitch can also be deployed as a separate system and is
getting significant interest from service providers to be used for additional
applications. "UTStarcom has found great success in deploying its mSwitch
product to developing telecommunications markets that require flexible,
cost-effective solutions," Kevin Mitchell, directing analyst (service
provider networks), Infonetics Research, an international market research and
consulting firm covering the networking and telecommunications industries, said.
The product is widely deployed in China and many other emerging telecom markets.

Ravi Shekhar Pandey