Service Provider Networks / Wireless/Mobile /

Winphoria gears switch for wireless

By Terri Gimpelson
The Edge, 03/05/02

Winphoria Networks this week unveiled a Class-5 switch designed for Mobile Switching Centers (MSC).

An MSC is traditionally a circuit switch that connects a mobile radio access network to the public network. Winphoria's WMS-5000, however, is both a packet-based and voice-centric MSC with distributed call-processing capabilities, the company says. It is designed for 2G and 3G wireless networks.

The WMS-5000 can fit into two seven-foot telco racks. Similar systems, Winphoria claims, take up between 25 and 35 racks.

The most common application for the WMS-5000 would be inter-MSC transport. Here, the box would be the switch at the center of a network that connects all other network devices.

The WMS-5000 is said to be able to manage more than 1.2 million Busy Hour Call Attempts (BHCA), defined as the number of call attempts made during the busiest hour of the day. Winphoria claims that competing systems from Lucent, Nortel, Alcatel and Ericsson can only handle between 150 and 250 BHCA.

In addition, the WMS-5000 can be deployed as a gateway to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), connecting all Local Exchange Carrier (LEC) MSCs to the PSTN. In this application, the WMS-5000 forwards all calls from the PSTN to the appropriate MSC. Traditional configurations, according to Winphoria, require every LEC MSC to be connected individually to the PSTN as well as all other MSCs on the network. This means that each MSC would also have to reserve capacity designated only for connection to the PSTN.

While the number of MSCs the WMS-5000 can support in the gateway application varies depending on the amount of traffic it must handle, Winphoria says that typical configurations consist of between three and five MSCs.

The WMS-5000 can also act as a serving MSC, which Winphoria says is simply an extension of the gateway application. Simply put, the box will support all RAN protocols, and will perform the arbitration between each of them.

The box hosts services, including Global Instant Rendezvous (GIR), an interactive communications service similar to Nextel's Push-to-Talk walkie-talkie-like service. GIR comes as a standard service in the WMS-5000.

While the company would not disclose specific pricing information, executives say that an average price for this type of switch is between $3 million and $10 million, depending on capacity and size. The WMS-5000, Winphoria says, is never more than half of that price.

The company says it has shipped its first units to a large customer as part of a sale made a couple of weeks ago. The deployment is expected to take between six and seven months. Specifics of the deal, including the identity of the customer, could not be disclosed.