MetaSwitch eNews - January 2008

Happy New Year eNews readers! I hope your holiday season was grand and that you are ready to dive into 2008.

In this edition of MetaSwitch eNews Bernie Arnason of Pivot Media discusses the topic of convergence in telecom. The article is quite an interesting read and is very relevant to the state of telecommunications today. You will also be be introduced to the "Voice of MetaSwitch", our own Marie Mayer, who does all of the voice recordings for the various MetaSwitch applications. Lastly, we were excited to announce recently our deployment by Cable and Wireless on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. More on that story below.

Convergence Momentum is Building

Bernie Arnason, Pivot Media LLC

The issue of convergence has been talked about for many years now. Conceptually, it makes great sense. Combining the utility and convenience of wireless, wireline, and web into a common communications experience holds tremendous promise. Wireless carriers look to convergence to build additional value and incremental revenue opportunities. Wireline carriers hope for those opportunities as well, but also see convergence as a tool to help maintain relevancy for traditional wireline communications. Immense development resources have been devoted to convergence, accompanied by the hype that comes with such attention. Many may argue that the rate of actual convergence deployments have lagged the hype. But that may be beginning to change.

Marie Mayer, The Voice of MetaSwitch

If you dial into the MetaSwitch to make phone calls, then you are familiar with the voice on the end of the line when you retrieve your voicemail, dial a number that is out of service or change your phone settings. You may have even run into that same voice on the MetaSwitch conference server or if you use Auto Attendant or Privacy Defender. Have you ever stopped and wondered about who it is on the line, always there to assist you in your time of need? The voice of MetaSwitch is our own Marie Mayer, a true pioneer who has been with the company since we set up shop in the Alameda office. In this edition of eNews, Editor Cory Boller sat down with Marie to discuss the magic of the voice, company growth and what it takes to be successful in telecommunications today.

Question: What is your experience in the telecom industry and what was your path to MetaSwitch?

I started in the telecom industry as a long distance operator for Illinois Bell. When divestiture happened, I became an AT&T employee. I stayed with AT&T until 1998 when the company was offering managers a nice package to leave. I decided it was time for new ventures.

I began doing regional recordings for AT&T on a whim. I had no experience with voice recordings at that point but was hand picked simply because they liked my voice!

I love karaoke! But I'm not sure we can incorporate that into the MetaSwitch. Wait, what about Music on Hold?

Cable & Wireless International Deploys MetaSwitch for Next Generation Voice Services

World's leading global communications company completes first deployment in Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, plans further roll-out for other territories

MetaSwitch recently announced that Cable & Wireless International (CWI) has completed its first deployment using the MetaSwitch switching platform. The initial deployment for CWI was in Diego Garcia, a territory in the Indian Ocean that hosts one of the United States military's key overseas bases. The softswitch, which was installed and deployed in two weeks, replaces an older switch that was considered to be at end of its useful life.

"We were extremely pleased with the success of this initial deployment, in no small part due to the commitment and professionalism of the MetaSwitch support team," said Frank Mount, Chief Technology Officer of CWI. "We are committed to moving towards a full IMS architecture for next generation voice services and with their experience migrating legacy voice switches to carrier-class IP-based platforms, MetaSwitch has a valuable role to play in that strategy."

The Diego Garcia deployment of a MetaSwitch VP2510 Integrated Softswitch includes traditional telephony, as well as new Voice over IP services enabled by the MetaSwitch infrastructure. Serving approximately 2,000 residents, the new system supports a combination of E1 and T1 traffic, and routes off-island traffic through satellite connections.

MetaSwitch Service Delivery Platforms - "New Services Made Easy"

By Dan Marcus, Marketing Director

Today's service providers are facing well-known challenges including ARPU erosion as voice becomes a commodity and aggressive competitors begin offering a broad range of services. In response, it is important to deliver new high-revenue services. Unfortunately, there is a major obstacle barring the services providers' path: their traditional network integration and marketing processes mean that new service development takes a very long time and costs a huge amount.

The Service Delivery Platform (SDP) has been developed as a solution to this problem. An SDP allows the service provider to define, develop and deploy new services far faster than they have been able to in the past. This is achieved in two ways:

If you are considering deploying a SDP it is important to understand the benefits an SDP has and its relationship to the legacy technologies it is designed to augment or replace. To read more about the background of SDPs, and get a basic introduction to the architecture and characteristics of SDPs that are specifically designed for telephony applications read MetaSwitch's new whitepaper Service Delivery Platforms - "New Services Made Easy."

And Finally...