In the last installment of AudioCodes NextGen News, I talked about the telecom economic desert we were traveling through and how the telecom resurgence of late is “not a mirage, it is real”. After weathering the sand storms, the carriers have become very sensitive to CapEx (Capital Expenditures) and OpEx (Operating Expenditures) costs. This sensitivity has incited the operators to look at how they are installing, growing and building their networks. The major wireless carriers are looking at wireless networks + long distance networks (to interconnect the different parts of their network) + wired networks (some new and some old). Well, it costs a lot to build, operate and maintain three different, separate networks. So now the carriers are looking at combining these networks with a common core network to better optimize their costs. With Voice over IP’s (VoIP’s) disaggregated architecture of separated control, bearer and applications, carriers are able to centralize the control and application servers and distribute the bearer for reduced OpEx and CapEx.

Helping facilitate this convergence is the use of 3GPP’s (Third Generation Partnership Program) next generation UMTS (Universal Mobile Telephony System – next generation GSM) network architecture, based on VoIP’s next generation disaggregated architecture. 3GPP’s Release 5 (R’5) set of specifications details an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) core network, whose primary benefit is the use of IP on the core network and disaggregated architecture to offer new services. This same R’5 core network can be used to form a converged core network in which cellular, voice over WiFi and wireline users can access new services over a common core network.

One enabling technology being used in this R’5 IMS core network is SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), which is used for call control. User devices such as IP phones, new cell phones with VoIP, wireless PDAs, computers, etc. can use SIP to request services over the different access types such as cellular, WiFi and wired IP networks. These devices ultimately wind up being connected to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) via the core network using either SIP-enabled media gateways or SIP-enabled media gateway controllers, which then communicate with media gateways using Megaco (Media gateway controller protocol). These devices may also be connected to Application Media Servers using SIP or to each other using SIP. Currently, AudioCodes is able to offer SIP-enabled Media Pack™ (MP-1xx) media gateways for the enterprise and Mediant™ converged media gateways for interconnection to the PSTN.

Using the same analogy, the oasis we have wound up at is better than the place we started from. There will shortly be newer services available over new core networks accessible through multiple access methods (wired, cellular, WiFi, cable, etc.) servicing multiple user types. Now, it will take a little while for this to all happen, so we need to be patient. As they say, “Rome was not built in a day.”