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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: slacker711 who wrote (15661)	10/10/2001 9:28:36 AM
From: Eric L	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 196668

re: Bell Labs (Lucent) COPS Gateway for HLR Interoperability << Another take on yesterday's Lucent development....with comments from Verizon spokesman. >> Another here. Hopefully I'm not duplicating. >> Bell Labs Cracks HLR Interoperability For Mobile Roaming Elizabeth Biddlecombe Total Telecom 10 October 2001 Bell Labs has announced a development that puts a key piece of the global mobile roaming jigsaw in place. The research and development arm of Lucent Technologies, based in Murray Hill, New Jersey, has developed a software architecture that allows the functions of the Home Location Register (HLR) to be accessed by a handset operating on any network be it CDMA 2000, UMTS, 802.11b or IP. This means that users will be able to access voice and data services when roaming outside of their home network since the Home Location Register locates, identifies and profiles users, taking care of authentication, authorisation and location data. At present HLRs sitting on different types of wireless network can't talk to each other. Bell Labs has formulated a solution which it calls COPS - Common Operations - which basically translates HLR signalling in to a single common language so that a subscriber profile can be accessed whatever the network type. "We've been focusing on having different network types speak to each other...to allow the access parts of the network to evolve independently," Tom La Porta, Director of Mobile Network Research, told Total Telecom. He pointed out that COPS would work with GSM's MAP signalling as well as ANSI 41 (for CDMAOne) or SIP for Internet Telephony. "Each network have their specific protocol for access [but] for services the unctions are the same - so we've abstracted them, made it generic," he said. La Porta explained that Bell Labs opted for a software approach rather than developing specific gateways for each translation instance to ensure scalability, performance and flexibility for future services. Not only would COPS, once evolved into a commercial product, enable inter-network roaming (including roaming from 2G to 3G) but it would bring greater flexibility to operators. "With this technology breakthrough, carriers will be able to more easily migrate from one network protocol to another without replacing the HLR," said Krishan Sabnani, vice president of the Networking Research Laboratory. "Additionally, callers will be able to use their phones in the same way on a guest network -including networks in other countries and regions - that they do at home." It is likely that the technology will be incorporated into a product from Lucent Technologies in the next twelve months. However it provides just one of several functions that need to be taken care of to ensure roaming. Other components in the puzzle include multi-mode chipsets in devices as well as internetworking between transmission types. Southlake, Texas-based Transat Technologies is one company that is working on the latter with a methodology that allows a GSM/GPRS backbone to ride over other air interfaces such as Wireless LANs or CDMA. As Martin Greenwood, VP of Sales and Marketing, explained, the Bell Labs development will assist the kind of work Transat is doing. Transat technology currently interacts with a GSM HLR and while the company could develop an interface to a CDMA HLR, "It is nicer if there is a "standard" interface," he said. "If you could have a common language for HLRs to communicate then these would overcome this problem. The HLR and billing interface are critically important. If you can do the HLR then you are 90% there: if you can exchange information [between network types] then you can give the subscriber the right service," he explained. Greenwood highlighted the importance of this development to the CDMA operators. "I think that it is going to be an important intermediate step in the assimilation of CDMA (CDMA One) into the mainstream," he told Total Telecom. "We have been talking to Verizon and Qualcomm about this stuff, and clearly there is a lot of interest on the part of CDMA proponents in being able to integrate with GSM networks, if only from the point of view of roaming." But despite his enthusiasm for the Bell Labs technology Greenwood pointed out that operators would need to change a lot of equipment to implement the system. "Operators have got to be persuaded to deploy it. That will be the limiting factor," he said. << - Eric -

To: slacker711 who wrote (15661)	10/10/2001 9:34:08 AM
From: Ramsey Su	Respond to of 196668

Regarding LU's announcement, the first carrier that I thought of is China Unicom. Since they will be, as far as I know, the only carrier in the world that uses both CDMA and GSM, they should have no problem "signing" a roaming agreement with themselves. The second carrier is VOD. Did LU just offer them a cheap solution to roaming between VZ and Europe?