NEXT-GENERATION NETWORKS

A next-gen carrier, in starting out with pure VoIP networks, doesn't face the same problem as an incumbent, the need to evolve a massive legacy network to support new enhanced services and to support existing services in a most cost-effective manner. But that advantage is also a disadvantage in that it cannot rely on an installed base and must attract customers from the incumbents networks to its own. The key to attracting these customers is deploying a next-generation architecture to rapidly introduce enhanced services.

Convedia Media Server in a Next-Gen Network Deployment

The diagram above shows a typical deployment scenario for a next-gen network. The media servers in such a network are controlled by softswitches and/or application servers, and provide all the media processing required by all the services in the network.

The voice services that next-gen carriers can offer to their customers include Class 4 (routing-related) services, IP Centrex, voicemail, card services (e.g., prepaid, postpaid), business conferencing (scheduled, on-demand, and instant), and call center (automatic call distribution) services. All of these services make use of a media server for processing of audio streams, under the control of a softswitch or application server. Here are some examples of how each of the media server's capabilities—also called building blocks—are used by the services:

• announcements: network announcements, service announcements for all services, branding
• IVR: feature programming, feature invocation, voicemail, card, conferencing, call center
• bridging: POTS three-way calls, Centrex six-way calls, conferencing, call center
• play/record: call screening, voicemail, conferencing
• speech recognition, text-to-speech: operator services, directory services, call center