Tekelec is buying a controlling stake in Santera to form a subsidiary that will be a more formidable competitor to other packet telephony vendors. The subsidiary - called Santera, a Tekelec company - will be funded with $40 million and staffed by 275 people. It will sell a portfolio of softswitches, media gateways and signaling gateways from the combination of Tekelec's GenuOne signaling/call-control platform and Santera's SanteraOne system, and integrates Class 4/5 trunking and local switching and media gateway capabilities. Tekelec will own 52% of Santera with the option to increase that to 62% or eventually to buy it outright. (Read the story)

The carrier formerly known as WorldCom is planning a series of product rollouts that center around voice and data convergence and managed services. MCI launched its “Convergence Networking” product strategy at NetWorld+Interop last week and its first order of business is to deploy Secure Interworking Gateways (SIG) throughout its data to turn up a new service called IP VPN Remote. MCI also plans to interconnect its frame relay and MPLS IP networks that support its Private IP and IP VPN services, respectively. After that, it will interconnect its remaining data networks - ATM, private line and public IP. In July, the carrier is expected to make its MCI Advantage converged voice/data service offering available to its Private IP customers. (Read the story)

Speaking of interconnecting VPNs, Alcatel last week unveiled software for its 7670 Routing Switch Platform that's designed to meld frame relay and Ethernet services into a "unified" VPN. The software, called Service Interworking, maps frame relay DLCIs to Ethernet VLAN tags, and vice versa. The motive behind Service Interworking is to allow service providers to introduce new Ethernet services without disrupting their revenue-generating frame relay infrastructures. There is standards work underway for this type of mapping capability, but Alcatel said it just could wait another year or more for that standard. (Read the story)