ORLANDO, Fla.-Switch manufacturer Summa Four Inc. is collaborating with software designer Engineering and Business Systems Inc. to create and market a mini mobile switching center for the personal communications services market.
The miniMSC will use Summa Four’s Virtual Central Office open, programmable switch and EBS’ Access-Manager middleware running on an external Unix system.
“Summa Four’s VCO switch is ideal to support the miniMSC,” said James Gagne, director of marketing for EBS. “The VCO switch design enables rapid standards-compliant application development.”
Summa Four’s open, programmable switching products are scalable, have an open application programming interface and use universal network interfaces. The switch complies with key telephone industry standards; more than 800 Summa Four switches operate in more than 20 countries.
Service providers can use open, programmable switches to build intelligent, flexible networks that allow them to quickly develop and deploy new services, Summa Four said. With market competition growing, carriers are expected to differentiate themselves as much on service offerings as on price. So the ability to quickly change service offerings can be critical in today’s market, the company said.
Developing new services requires years under the centralized way of adding network intelligence, and it is difficult to add more than one service at a time. With programmable switches, new services can take 60 to 90 days, with software companies writing applications to meet specific customer needs, Summa Four leaders said.
The new intelligent services are not added to the closed and proprietary central office switches, but to an open switching platform that acts as a peer in the network to the central office switch. Programmable switches augment rather than replace central office switches, according to Summa Four.
“The miniMSC will be very attractive to the cost conscious PCS carrier,” said John Shaw, Summa Four director of marketing. “It provides the flexibility to support a variety of applications.”
Programmable switches are used in the Pacific Rim, Asia and South America to build telecommunication infrastructure, leading to an overseas demand for the product. Summa Four said 38 percent of its fiscal 1996 orders were international.
Summa Four was founded in 1976 and completed its initial public offering in September 1993. It has headquarters in Manchester, N.H., and offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Mount Laurel, N.J., San Francisco, Washington, D.C., the United Kingdom and Singapore. The company plans to open an office in Japan this year.
EBS is a privately held company founded in 1987 and based in Shelton, Conn. EBS designs and develops intelligent network software products and platforms for wireline and wireless communications. The company is interested in attracting original equipment manufacturers, value-added resellers, system integrators and other vendors in partnership. EBS said its products have been deployed in more than 20 countries.
Mobile short messaging is possible with EBS’ Short Messaging Server software. Text messages of up to 160 characters can be sent to a mobile subscriber from sources such as voice mail, operator terminals, e-mail, fax or paging. Messages are stored against the recipient’s mobile phone number in an industry standard database.
The SM Server is compatible with the Global System for Mobile communications protocol. A U.S. version that will comply with Interim Standard-41 is scheduled for release by this year’s fourth quarter.
