Continuing our highlights from CTIA (held earlier this month), today we'll review convergence-related announcements from Alcatel-Lucent on an extended relationship with Genband for mobile Next Generation Network (NGN) solutions, from NextPoint on Session Border Controller (SBC) capabilities with an IP Mobility Suite, and from Yahoo about enhancements to its mobile search capabilities.

Alcatel-Lucent added Genband’s new G9 Converged Media Gateway to Alcatel-Lucent carrier-grade NGN solution. Today, more than 20 million Genband media gateway ports are already deployed as part of Alcatel-Lucent’s Mobile NGN solution. The G9 media gateway provides a migration path from stand-alone mobile switching centers to centralized mobile call servers - bringing a 3GPP compliant IP-Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) gateway designed to offer low-cost distributed networks that will facilitate enhancements like fixed-mobile convergence (FMC).

NextPoint announced it has added new mobility-enabling features to its Integrated Border Gateway (IBG) product suite. NextPoint’s IBG consolidates Session Border Controller (SBC) capabilities with Security Gateway features. The IP Mobility Suite supports Packet Data Interworking Function (PDIF) needed by Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) based operators and Tunnel Termination Gateway (TTG) for GSM- and Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS)-based operators. The IBG is designed to “provide for delivery of voice and data ‘combinational’ services to mobile IP users, ensuring subscribers’ continuity experience across IP networks for both sessions and data,” according to the company.

Joe McGarvey, principal analyst for Current Analysis, commenting on the NextPoint announcement said, “How and where convergence is achieved will determine the winners and losers in this race. By integrating PDIF [for CDMA] and TTG [for GSM] within one product, NextPoint allows service providers to support widely deployed WLAN and WiMAX applications. They can also better scale to converge their WLAN and mobile networks and truly migrate to a converged core network.”

Finally, Yahoo announced a next generation of mobile search capabilities with Yahoo oneSearch 2.0 that will allow users to initiate searches faster using text or voice. Although the announced search upgrade capability is targeted to help consumers, we think the planned innovations Yahoo also announced could provide the basis for some very interesting enterprise mobility opportunities. For example, Yahoo “plans to provide greater relevance through richer, more detailed search results by opening up Yahoo oneSearch to publishers to integrate content, simplify search input with Search Assist and voice-enabled search, and make search instantly accessible on the idle screen of many phones.”

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Larry Hettick is a principal analyst at Current Analysis.