The CS 1500 will allow small and medium-sized wireline service providers to meet growing subscriber demand for both local and long-distance voice and next generation services. It also positions 'greenfield' service providers to offer advanced services and lays the foundation for future IMS-based multimedia services offering unprecedented levels of personalization, security and mobility.
Nortel has also introduced new Global Services to help small and medium-sized service providers deploy new IP-based services more quickly and optimize network efficiency and security.
Nortel is already talking to channel partners in the US where one reseller commented, "We are frequently looking for technology that allows us to leverage our existing investments and infrastructure to deliver a highly-reliable telephone service to our customers and also seamlessly introduce new IP-based services as they become available," said Jake Casey, executive vice president of Citizens Communications, a full-service communications provider offering telephone, television and Internet products and services in rural areas and small and medium-sized towns and cities around the United States. "Nortel's CS 1500 will help us satisfy our customers' communications needs today and expand our network to support more advanced services in the future."
"Nortel's CS 1500 softswitch will provide a low-cost, highly-reliable solution for small and medium-sized service providers to simply and easily support the traditional voice services needed today while laying the foundation for future IP-based services of tomorrow," said Alan Stoddard, general manager, Carrier Multimedia Networks, Nortel. "Nortel is leveraging its VoIP leadership to help service providers seamlessly evolve their networks to a new cost-effective packet infrastructure capable of delivering the advanced communications services subscribers are demanding."
The CS 1500 is scheduled for field trials starting fourth quarter 2006 and general availability in selected global markets during the first quarter of 2007. Nortel will showcase the CS 1500 at GLOBALCOMM 2006 (booth # 41018) June 5-7 in Chicago.
"VoIP is an expected and virtually required progression of all communication networks, and the focus is on not only how to make it fit within an evolving network and service environment, but also how to make it profitable," said Bettina Tratz-Ryan, research director, Gartner. "To this end, service providers are turning to softswitch architecture to migrate their networks to IP and deliver scalable, multimedia services to end users that generate new revenues from day one."
Building on Nortel's leadership position in SIP and VoIP, CS 1500 provides a platform for advanced SIP based services and a cost-effective evolution path for DMS-10 and DMS-100 customers.