GENBAND (News - Alert) is a busy company these days. Coming off the recent announcement that they have closed the acquisition of Tekelec’s Switching Solutions Group, and the subsequent news that they were spinning off the T7000 business into the new Taqua (News - Alert), followed by the recent report that Infonetics has named the company’s 8000 Converged Media Gateway the world’s leader in port shipments for 2006, you might think the corporate management might give the marketing and engineering teams some time off for good behavior.

 

But that’s just not to be.

 

Yesterday, GENBAND announced two new media gateways. The G9 Converged Media Gateway (News - Alert) is a scalable, flexible solution designed to serve both fixed-line and mobile operators, and the G2 Compact Media Gateway is a compact and hardened media gateway providing packet line and trunking media gateway capabilities for fixed-line and cable carriers.

 

According to GENBAND, both the G2 and G9 products are a perfect match for GENBAND’s G6 Universal Media Gateway. All three gateway offerings support GENBAND’s open softswitch architecture that enables carriers to utilize the call control of their choice, whether for fixed line, cable, or mobile applications.

 

The G9 builds upon the company’s first-generation 8000 Media Gateway, which was lauded by Infonetics as the market leader. The G9 shares its software — which has been field-hardened for six years across 22 million+ ports — with the 8000 platform software. Support for IP, TDM, and ATM makes the G9 a good choice for operators transitioning to IMS.

 

According to GENBAND’s vice president of corporate development and marketing, Jody Bennett, the G2 has its roots in legacy GENBAND product line.

 

Bennett told TMCnet that, “We've taken the G6 product and developed a 2U version using the same architecture, the same software.”

 

Bennett also mentioned that customers were asking for a smaller version of the media gateway.

 

“When you get below five or six or seven hundred DS0s the G6 is not as cost effective. We've had a lot of customer demand even at the large ILEC level, for a smaller unit that would scale below 700 DS0s. The G2 scales from 24 to720 DS0s.

 

The G2 is hardened, to enable deployment in an outside plant. Deploying the G2 in this manner can help ILECs packetize the legacy access and help alleviate their dependence on their copper feeder networks, enabling them to softswitch enable that legacy access. The product can also act as a small trunking gateway, enabling circuit-to-packet media conversion, CALEA, E911, security, and other services using H.248, MGCP, or SIP-based call control.

 

Among the unique features that GENBAND brings to the table is the ability to provide emergency standalone services in a next-generation architecture.

 

Bennett explained, “Imagine a scenario where you have a centralized softswitch and for whatever reason the softswitch fails, and you lose connectivity. Our G6 and G2 can seamlessly come in and provide local dialing and emergency services dialing much the same as you see from digital switches today. It’s a very unique function in our gateway, and that’s driven a lot of demand for the product as well.”

 

The G9 is currently in three large customers’ labs, and it will begin commercial shipments in the third quarter, and the G2 will see commercial shipments begin in the fourth quarter.