By Paula Bernier

Tekelec will use TelecomNEXT this week to offer an update on its IMS strategy.

Mark Whittier, Tekelecs vice president of corporate marketing, said the company enables service providers to use its signaling platform to deliver new products without having to switch out its legacy switch platform.

When theyre ready to displace their existing platforms, we will be ready to supply them, he added. but were separating signaling and switching with our IMS platform so companies dont have to abandon legacy gear to add new services.

Another part of Tekelecs strategy is providing vertical solutions in the IMS realm, he added. At TelecomNEXT, Tekelec is demonstrating its fixed-mobile convergence platform, which uses the Tekelec 6000 VoIP Application Server as a call control and feature server, to deliver services to wired IP devices and to showcase Wi-Fi-to-cellular handoff capability.

Tekelec last week at the VON show came out with several enhancements to the T6000 and introduced the SIP-based Tekelec Video SoftPhone. Release 5.6.2 of the T6000 added support for multimedia, support for more SIP devices, end-user enhancements, support for IMS-compliant billing, and more.

The SIP-based Tekelec SoftPhone that integrates with the Tekelec 6000 Web Portal and Voice Assistant for multimedia communications now delivers video.

Also on the endpoint front, three new devices expand the more than 40 devices approved for use with the T6000. That includes the Linksys SPA-941 two- and four-line phones and the InnoMedia 3308 SIP phone.

And this new release of the T6000 allows mailbox sharing between multiple users phones and Web Portals, including shared message-waiting indication and notification via Web Portal and voice mail announcements when a mailbox is full. There are also more language choices, including Mandarin Chinese. And E911 enhancements let emergency service operators reconnect with emergency service callers while bypassing call-rejection features.

Also new is IMS-compliant billing for the T6000. It adds the P-mobile number and P-charging vector to allow for better recording and management of billing records across multiple IMS-based platforms. Rob Russell, Tekelecs director of product marketing for the switching group, said since the IMS architecture includes different platforms, those platforms have to share information related to billing. Tekelec is supporting that IMS billing capability first in its T6000, but will add it later to the rest of the product line, he said.

And a new product called the Tekelec 8200 supports up to 16 T1 or E1 ports and joins more than 12 gateways that operate with the T6000, including the Tekelec 9000 Distributed Switching Solution and Tekelec 7000 Class 5 Packet Switch.

In 2005, the T6000s customer base increased by 84 percent while the number of sold subscriber licenses increased by 90 percent.

And just last week Tekelec announced that Vortex Broadband Communications is deploying several T6000s to launch nationwide voice, broadband and hosted VoIP services. Vortex, a long-time T6000 customer, first deployed a Tekelec 6000 server in 2004 in a trial of its hosted PBX and VoIP services to businesses and residences throughout Florida. Since that time, the carrier has grown to offer fixed wireless-based voice, broadband, point-to-point, VoIP, virtual private network and Wi-Fi services nationwide.

Tekelecs VoIP Application Server is a major differentiator for our national service launch by providing the widest, most robust VoIP feature set available, particularly for our highest revenue-generating subscriber segment of small businesses, said Todd Shepherd, president and founder of Vortex Broadband. The reliability and scalability of the Tekelec 6000 has helped us to cost-effectively expand our services on a national scope and offer more advanced services and a better value than any other VoIP provider on the market.

Tekelec www.tekelec.com
Vortex Broadband www.vortexbb.net