MetaSwitch Advances Call Diagnostic Abilities for Carriers with MetaView Enhancements

New functionality records and provides detailed traces for all calls to ensure high-quality service to enable subscriber satisfaction and retention

 

Las Vegas, NXTcomm 2008: June 17, 2008. MetaSwitch, a leading provider of switching and application solutions, today announced the MetaView Service Assurance Server (SAS), a new component of the MetaView Network Management System. The SAS is a tool that reflects MetaSwitch's strong commitment to helping customers solve end-to-end network issues thereby enhancing a carrier's overall solution. The initial release of SAS provides detailed call traces that allow technicians to diagnose many common configuration, network and interoperability problems affecting user service. Carriers can now address one of their most significant ongoing operational costs - ensuring the highest level of call quality and service to subscribers.

According to Chris Mairs, MetaSwitch CTO, "With other systems, carriers can typically only set a diagnostics trace on a line or group of lines after a problem has been reported, which can be very frustrating when trying to diagnose intermittent problems." Instead of having to wait for a particular problem to occur again to pinpoint it, the MetaView SAS collects all the information a carrier could need, on each and every call, over any IP or TDM protocol, allowing those sporadic issues to be looked at in great detail and solved quickly. In addition, it eliminates the need to explicitly turn on tracing for particular lines should a carrier anticipate the reoccurrence of a reported fault.

"The MetaView SAS is the only solution on the market today that records and troubleshoots these details in real-time," explained Mairs. "This enables carriers to provide the highest-quality and most reliable voice service possible to subscribers, helping to increase subscriber retention. In addition, the MetaView SAS helps lower operational costs and increase support staff productivity eliminating the need for lengthy problem reproduction."

"I was very excited to get a 'sneak preview' demonstration of this capability at the recent MetaSwitch Forum event," said David Birnbaum, president and CEO of Public Interest Network Services, Inc. "The ability to visualize everything that is occurring within our voice network, and immediately view the history of a particular line when a subscriber calls to report a problem, is immensely valuable and sets MetaSwitch apart from every other softswitch platform we have seen."

The MetaView SAS has a powerful and easy-to-use Web graphical user interface (GUI) that customer service representatives can use to investigate issues, passing the problems on to technicians if needed. The Web GUI allows support staff to print or export traces, either for offline storage or to forward to the MetaSwitch support team for additional assistance. Traces include:

  • High-level call detail, including name, start time, duration
  • Decoded signaling messages
  • Routing and number validation events
  • Call service actions/decisions
  • Codec selection and echo cancellation programming
  • Billing records and concise call logs
  • Media events such as digit and tone detection, tone generation, and digit out-pulsing

Carriers configure and manage the SAS as part of the MetaView Network Management System (NMS). The NMS simplifies network management for carriers, offering features like fault management; SOAP/XML provisioning models; accounting and performance tools and "out-of-the-box" integrated provisioning to enable the rapid and easy deployment of new services. Providing a single management environment for both MetaSwitch class 4/5 softswitch elements and MetaSphere application servers, MetaView significantly enhances carriers' ability to reduce operational costs even as they introduce compelling new services into the network.

MetaSwitch will be conducting live demonstrations of its MetaView Network Management System, including the Service Assurance Server, voice quality monitoring features and SIP Provisioning Server in Booth SU6726 at NXTcomm 2008, held at the Las Vegas Convention Center from June 16-18, 2008.

About MetaSwitch

MetaSwitch is an industry-leading vendor of switching and applications solutions for both packet and circuit-switched networks. Its MetaSphere applications suite enables a broad set of hosted IP communications services, while its core session control and media/signaling gateway products support a full range of Class 4/5 softswitch capabilities. Customers include many of the world's leading operators of wireline, wireless and cable networks, with deployments that scale to millions of subscribers. For more information, please visit www.metaswitch.com.