Alcatel Introduces New Integrated Platform for Delivering Scalable, Feature Rich Voice, Fax, and Data Services Over the New Public Data Network.

GENEVA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 12, 1999--

Product leverages Assured Access Universal Access Gateway

and Alcatel SS7 and IN expertise

Alcatel at Telecom 99 - Hall 4, Stand n(degree) 210

Alcatel today announced an integrated platform for delivering scalable, feature-rich voice, fax and data services over the new public network. The integrated product enables service providers to easily provision voice over IP (VoIP) services - with many of the advanced calling features found only in today's circuit switched voice network using the same physical interface as data and fax services.

Combining Alcatel's technology leadership in telecommunications with recently acquired Assured Access' expertise in IP-based multi-service access, the integrated voice, fax and data product is composed of five key components: the Assured Access Universal Access Gateway, Alcatel's 1135 Service Management Center/Gatekeeper, the Alcatel Call Signaling Gateway, and Alcatel's IN 1400 Service Control Point and Service Creation Environment.

"By combining the best of the voice and data switching worlds, these technologies deliver on the promise of convergence," said Peter Michiels, Vice President of Alcatel's carrier data activities. "With the new product, service providers can now easily manage thousands of voice, fax and data paths and add new users and services on the fly - a necessary feature in this quickly evolving market."

The core of the product is Assured Access' NEBS level 3-compliant Universal Access Gateway, a highly scalable product that supports voice, fax, and dial-up data (V.90, ISDN) on the same physical interface, enabling service providers to provision all three services in a cost-effective manner. Built to scale as service providers add new subscribers, the Universal Access Gateway is a high-density dial-up remote access server family that supports more than 2,000 VoIP/FoIP or V.90 data ports per shelf and more than 8,000 VoIP/FoIP ports per standard seven-foot telco rack.

The platform leverages Alcatel's revolutionary 1135 Service Management Center, an integrated management center and H.323 compliant gatekeeper that manages multiple Universal Access Gateways as a single entity. Already deployed extensively with carriers in Europe and Asia, the software enables service providers to create and manage a service profile for each individual user, a necessary feature for provisioning profitable service level agreements (SLAs). The Service Management Center also incorporates a RADIUS server that provides the accounting, authentication and authorization functions required with the operation of data networks today.

"With over 8,000 VoIP ports per rack and a unified management interface in the Service Management Center, the Alcatel solution gives service providers both the scalability and the simplicity they need to keep up with customer demand while holding down their operating costs," said Robert Bellman, president of Brook Trail Research. "By supporting voice, data, and fax on the same platform, the Universal Access Gateway not only minimizes equipment costs, but also keeps the provider's network as simple and easy to manage as possible."

"The Alcatel approach to integrated voice, fax and data over IP is exactly the type of solution we have been looking for to provide advanced voice and data services to our customers," said Bret Mingo, president and CEO of CoreCom, a fast growing CLEC serving the mid-Atlantic region. "By supporting voice, data, and fax on the same interface modules and integrating Alcatel's time-tested voice products, the solution will allow a service provider like CoreCom to provision and manage voice services at a level of granularity that maximizes responsiveness to customer demands while minimizing hardware investments."

Universal Access Gateway

The Universal Access Gateway is a scalable, high-density dial-up remote access server family that supports more than 2,000 VoIP/FoIP or V.90 data ports per shelf and more than 8,000 VoIP/FoIP ports per standard seven-foot telco rack.

With a new universal server module specifically designed for the Universal Access Gateway application, the Alcatel platform can terminate voice and data calls on the same PSTN port, supporting dial-up data, PSTN phone, PSTN fax, PSTN terminal and H.323 terminal calls. Voice and fax features include the full range of compression, conversion, echo cancellation and encoding schemes including G.711, G.723.1 and G.729A for voice and T.37 and T.38 for fax. The product offers redundancy features and 99.999% system availability.

The Universal Access Gateway features digital signal processor (DSP) technology on each card, automatically recognizing and compressing voice and data traffic using a full range of voice and fax protocols.

Designed to provide the flexibility needed at the edge of the service provider's network the Universal Access Gateway boasts a wide variety of PSTN access interfaces including channelized DS3, T1, E1 and PRI. The Universal Access Gateway also offers industry standard WAN interfaces including 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, ATM on DS3 and OC-3c/STM-1 and frame relay.

Alcatel Service Management Center

The voice over IP product also features Alcatel's 1135 Service Management center, a key component for advanced call control and VPN-based resource management of dial-up and voice-over-IP networks. The Service Management Center manages multiple gateways as a unified resource, providing extensive VPN management support, complete accounting and billing capability and multiple built-in H.323 compliant VoIP Gatekeepers to enable carrier-class wholesale and retail business models.

Using the advanced functionality of the Service Management Center, the Universal Access Gateway deals with each call as an individual account, enabling the system to individually provision, upgrade, manage and route all connections and user profiles on the fly. Resources across all the gateways are pooled and made available in a unified fashion, allowing network operators to allocate voice and data calls across the entire pool of gateways.

The Service Management Center also features an easy-to-use graphical user interface, allowing service providers to register new subscribers, create new services and configure billing parameters easily and quickly. To maximize the flexibility of the system, the product also features a proxy service, allowing the service provider to integrate its preexisting authentication, billing and accounting platforms with the Universal Access Gateway.

Alcatel Call Signaling Gateway

The Alcatel VoIP solution also incorporates Alcatel's Call Signaling Gateway, a sophisticated SS7 Signaling Gateway capable of processing from 10,000 to 50,000 TCAP messages per second. The Alcatel Call Signaling Gateway supports the MGCP (Multimedia Gateway Control Protocol) standard and protects against POP failure by performing load balancing and redirecting calls to available ports in the Universal Access Gateway. The Alcatel Call Signaling Gateway supports both ANSI and ETSI SS7 variants.

Leveraging Alcatel's proven expertise in SS7 and the PSTN switched network, the Call Signaling Gateway interfaces the PSTN's SS7 signaling network with the Universal Access Gateway, allowing the Universal Access Gateway to provide seamless call set-up between Internet networks and traditional PSTN switched networks.

About Alcatel

Alcatel builds next generation networks, delivering integrated end-to-end voice and data communications solutions to established and new carriers, as well as enterprises and consumers worldwide. With 120,000 employees and sales of EURO 21.3 billion ($25.0 billion), Alcatel operates in more than 130 countries.