AFC Introduces Voice Application to Support Voice over Packet Migration

Ryan Koontz, director of marketing at AFC, says there are an estimated 20,000 Class 5 switches in the country used to route America’s phone calls. That number will shrink as the biggest U.S. phone companies install new routing gear capable of supporting such services as Internet-based calling and VoD.

Koontz says AFC is helping telecom carriers, including Sprint Corp., make the transformation at the edge of their networks where customer lines connect to access equipment at the phone companies’ central offices.

Today, AFC introduced AdvancedVoice, a voice solution helping telecom carriers migrate their access networks from a circuit-switched architecture to converged networks capable of delivering both packetized voice and high-speed data services. AdvancedVoice is in trials and scheduled to be ready for widespread release in the middle of the year, Koontz says.

AdvancedVoice is just one application supported by AFC’s multi-service access platform, AccessMAX. Koontz says nearly 1,000 carriers around the world have implemented AccessMAX, which also supports DSL and FTTP, and can be configured as a DLC, DSLAM or optical line terminal.

Sprint is testing AdvancedVoice as it plans to replace its Class 5 switches with Nortel Networks Corp. softswitches, capable of routing calls over a managed data network and supporting such new phone features as video. In October 2001, Nortel announced a $1.1 billion contract with Sprint to convert 1 million lines into packet-switched lines. Matt Jackson, director of VoIP marketing with Nortel, says Sprint also will be able to consolidate 133 central offices into 32 offices because the softswitch -- the brain responsible for implementing hundreds of features -- can control separate pieces of equipment known as media gateways from up to 1,000 miles away.

“Sprint will continue converting lines from traditional Class 5 switches to next-generation softswitches, reaching 900,000 lines over the next two years,” Jim Hansen, senior vice president of Sprint Local Telecommunications Division Network, said today in a statement. “AFC’s AdvancedVoice solution is a component to successfully achieving our … objectives, enabling us to provide voice over packet services using our existing access equipment.”

Today, Nortel announced AFC and nine other companies had joined its partner program designed to foster interoperability between Nortel’s softswitch and third-party products. Nortel says it has completed interoperability testing between AFC’s AccessMAX H.248 gateway and Nortel Networks Succession CS 2000 softswitch portfolio.

“AFC’s new Gateway Processing Engine plug-in card enables AccessMAX systems to use the H.248 media gateway control protocol to interface with Nortel Networks’ Succession CS 2000,” Koontz says. “The combined solution allows subscriber calls initiated from traditional analog telephones to be converted into packets and switched efficiently through a converged packet network.”

Koontz says the estimated 20,000 Class 5 switches will not be replaced overnight. He anticipates phone companies will change hundreds of switches this year, not thousands. One obvious reason: the switches are highly reliable and help such phone giants as Verizon Communications Inc. produce billions of dollars in annual sales. However, the Class 5 switches were not designed to support the new services the biggest phone companies plan to offer, such as gaming, Internet-based calling and VoD.

“Other than Sprint, we’re seeing carriers are generally in an evaluation mode at this point for this solution, but it certainly better positions AFC to win more business because we have this capability,” Koontz says. “We are reducing the risk of investment. AFC and Nortel, as evidenced by today’s announcement, are saying that softswitched voice is ready for deployment.”

Jackson concurs it will take some time before all carriers implement the routing gear, but he says the migration represents “one of the largest growth areas in the telecommunications industry.” Last month, Nortel said Verizon named the company its VoIP equipment provider. “It’s certainly a long-term proposition,” Jackson says of the migration to packet-based networks. “We are looking at a decade at a minimum for doing the migration.”

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