The delivery of voice services over next generation networks has
never been a comfortable journey. The business reality takes
companies upwards and downwards, twists carriers in the wind of
market challenges and throws them in heavy seas of competition.
Konstantin Nikashov looks at the current market situation to
explain how VoIP softswitches ensure the efficient performance
of carriers’ networks.
VoIP adoption is in full swing worldwide. ABI
Research predicts a seven-fold increase in the
number of residential voice-over-IP subscribers
between 2006 and 2013, while Frost &
Sullivan forecasts enterprise VoIP services revenues to
surge to $ 3.3 billion in 2010. VoIP is already taken for
granted in Europe and the USA, while Asia and Latin
America register an incredible interest in the technology.
With this promising raise of demand for VoIP services
telecom carriers definitely should keep their finger on
the pulse of where the industry is heading.
Today’s telecom landscape offers carriers numerous
margin drivers that seem irresistibly tempting to anyone
in the business. VoIP calls are but packets of data travelling
across the Internet. The technology can be called
vir tual since it is not tied to physical locations or
devices. Carriers rent out their VoIP capabilities to get
higher revenues and traffic volumes. Virtualization facilitates
launching ser vice rendering to an unlimited
number of subscribers and adding new phone lines
wherever and whenever needed. VoIP allows for flexible
control over the system (either by the system administrator
or subscribers) and redundancy to help service
providers manage risks.
However, revenue-generating opportunities go hand
in hand with industry challenges. Cable companies
and Internet service providers that compete for the
market share with conventional telcos take advantage
of the fact that VoIP can be easily bundled up with
other services. Triple- and even Quad-Play, which are
included in selling propositions, increase load on
networks. Therefore, carriers need to ensure that their
switching platforms are able to handle huge volumes
of traffic with top-level reliability.
Obviously, there are two major tasks that telcos
striving to succeed should complete today. The most
urgent is a choice of the basic functionality that VoIP
solutions deployed on the networks must deliver. At
the same time service providers should always look
ahead in terms of developing their networks, so the
software has to keep up with industr y upgrades.
Another task is to set up criteria of the solution’s
successful performance. Along with basic features
some vendors offer unique capabilities that generate
additional business value and significantly raise
carrier’s revenues.
The galloping migration to NGN technologies that
started at the break of the 21st century instigated the
intensive use of VoIP softswitches as core elements
of carrier’s networks. However, not all softswitches
are created equal.
The primary softswitch functionality includes call
routing, call control and signalling, and deliver y of
media services. A lot of carriers appreciate when
softswitch routing capabilities are emphasized. The
whole concept of the softswitch is advantageous
since it allows decoupling software from hardware. It
means that new services can be added and removed
easily, and the deployed solution can be operated in
a flexible manner. Compared to traditional circuit
switches, softswitches deliver an elaborate functionality,
leave carriers with more freedom and save up
to 15-20 per cent on capex and opex.
Analysts argue, nevertheless, that the move towards
converged IP communications makes vendors emphasize
the session border controller (SBC) functionality
of VoIP softswitches.
SBCs are carrier-grade systems designed to facilitate
interconnection of disparate IP networks. Carriers
deploy softswitches with session border controller
capabilities on the border between two adjacent
networks to overcome protocol and codec conversion
challenges. SBCs also allow NAT and firewall traversal,
provide for access control, topology hiding, lawful
interception service compliance and ensure that only
authorized calls are admitted across network borders.
Session border controllers give a competitive edge
to ser vice providers that search ways to easily
combine calls and services from multi-vendor equipment
networks.
Other VoIP softswitches offered on the market today
are more sophisticated. And so is the ideology of their
deployment. What used to be simply a router has
evolved into a complex system of traffic transit
management. Best-of-breed softswitches per form
intelligent routing based on a variety of route hunting
criteria, keep and regularly update all the information
about rates and tariffs of peering partners. On top of
that, operation and QoS analysis tools of industryleading
softswitches enable carriers to come up with
competitive customer-driven service offerings, make
profitability forecasts and select the best partners.
