VERIZON SELECTS TELICA FOR FIRST PACKET VOICE SWITCH DEPLOYMENT
Verizon awarded a multi-year, multi-million dollar contract to Telica for its softswitch-based voice and data platform. Initially, Telica's Plexus 9000 switches are being deployed alongside existing Lucent 5E switches to provide Internet call switching, offloading ISP modem traffic from the circuit switched network. The equipment could also be used for additional packet voice applications, including the handling of long distance traffic.
The deployment marks the first commercial use of such equipment in Verizon's circuit-switched voice network, which uses Lucent, Nortel, Siemens and AGCS switches.
Telica has been working with Verizon for the past two and a half years on planning, testing and integration issues.
In addition to the lengthy evaluation process, Telica cited two technical factors that led to the selection of its platform - a high density enabling 90,000 ports per shelf, and the ability to integrate call control in the switching platform. Financial terms were not disclosed.
telica.com
Telica, October 9, 2001
Key features of the Telica Plexus 9000 include a 15 Gbps switching fabric (with a latency of only 1.2 ms); integrated SS7 signaling, call control and switching; Class 4/5 baseline features; transport and protocol transparency (IMT, SS7, ISDN PRI, ATM and IP); hot-swappable components and fault-tolerant software and firmware; and a high-density footprint (180,000+ protected DS-0's per rack).
In ILEC networks, the platform could be located beside or behind a Class 5 switch within an end office to perform voice and data service optimization. CLECs could place it in a central office co-location cage to serve as a Class 5 substitute, performing full termination and switching of data calls. The platform recently completed the Telcordia Technologies OSMINE (Operations Systems Modification of Intelligent Network Elements) process for the TIRKS Operations Support Systems (OSSs).
Last week, Telica announced three new CLEC customers for its Plexus 9000 switching system as well as the interconnection of those customer networks with all four RBOCs and Sprint Local networks. The new customers, which include Lucre (Michigan), Western Pacific Telecom (Nevada), and Telepak Networks (Mississippi), deployed the softswitching-based platform for Class 4 and Class 5 applications and Voice over Packet (VoP) capabilities.
Telica was co-founded by John St. Amand and Charles (Chuck)
Bates, both formerly with Dynamics Research Corporation (DRC). |
