Tekelec Unveils Product to Manage Surge in Text Messages over Airwaves

Reality TV shows have encouraged Americans to send messages over the airwaves in sporadic bursts, such as when millions of people are asked to vote for their favorite star on the show American Idol.

To handle the spike in traffic, wireless operators may temporarily require more capacity at centers where hundreds of messages are stored. So Tekelec, a major provider of signaling for wireless carriers, has announced a solution to lower operators’ cost by circumventing message centers and sending the traffic directly to a destination like a voting booth.

This can mean the difference between paying tens of millions of dollars, versus paying millions of dollars to support short text messages, according to J.M. Johnson, Jr., president and general manager of the Networking Signaling Division at Tekelec.

Tekelec contends its product, the Short Message Gateway, is capable of handling more than 8,000 messages per second, more than double the capacity of the most efficient centers.

Johnson says the service represents an extension of the relationship the company has with mobile operators. Tekelec, he says, performs signaling functions for 80 percent of all cellular calls.

This week Tekelec also introduced its wireless exchange media gateway series, the WX-8000, through Tekelec’s subsidiary, Santera. The platform allows mobile operators to migrate from a second-generation to a 3G network. Johnson says the platform can be used with Tekelec’s media gateway controller – the brains of the switch – or with other vendors’ equipment.

Tekelec says Spatial Wireless is the first original equipment manufacture partner for the product.

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