Convergence, a provider of session border control (SBC
) solutions for communications networks, recently announced that its Convergence (News - Alert) Session Manager (CSM) solution was chosen by
Dash Carrier Services to give customers access to reliable, high-quality and secure communications services, including
E911.
Denver, Colorado-based Dash Carrier Services (News - Alert) (formerly Clear Reach Networks) offers a variety of wholesale carrier solutions for VoIP
service providers. These services, delivered using its own network and infrastructure owned by Tier 1 partners, include nationwide origination/termination, 411 (directory assistance), and E911.
For those not familiar, E911 — short for “enhanced 9-1-1” — refers to a North American telecom system that is able to associate a physical address with a calling party’s phone number when he or she dials 9-1-1 for emergency services. This information is sent to the appropriate Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP).
There has been much discussion in recent years about the importance of E911, because at first most VoIP services did not guarantee matching of physical address with phone number during emergency calls. Legislative action pushed the issue to the forefront, and in most cases VoIP services today provide E911.
Convergence designed its CSM solution with E911 and other critical aspects of VoIP service in mind. It’s based on standards such as Web Services Description Language (WSDL) to provide an interface that gives developers the ability to dynamically control fine-grained, policy-based aspects of real-time communications. These standard protocols make it easier to embed such policies into applications, so the policies can be consistently policed during real-time sessions.
In a practical sense, these capabilities mean carriers can determine and control which options specific users are entitled to. This is very important to service providers that are operating in a highly competitive market and need to have tight control over all aspects affecting revenue.
Justin Nelson, CEO at Dash Carrier Services, explained that his company strives to offer customers unsurpassed quality and value, and with that in mind seeks to invest in technologies that can help achieve those objectives.
“The Covergence (News - Alert) Session Manager addresses this challenge by providing a rich programming interface which enables us to flexibly develop and deploy our communication applications,” Nelson said.
Bob O’Neill, president and CEO at Convergence, noted that Web Services and
Session Initiation Protocol (SIP
) are having big effects on the telecom industry when it comes to flexibility and interoperability, as well as the skills demanded of developers.
“By leveraging Web Services and CSM, organizations can reduce the costs and complexity of deployment without compromising availability, performance or security,” O’Neil said. “CSM provides Dash Carrier the ability to interact with services to provide the security, performance, quality and reliability thresholds its business customers need.”
Although CSM was designed with the need of small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) mind, its scalability makes it appropriate for even the largest service providers as well. The solution was recently enhanced with support for IBM BladeCenter and AdvancedTCA (News - Alert) chassis. CSM now supplies critical metrics to the management frameworks of HP, IBM and others. This gives operations teams complete visibility and control.
CSM is available directly from Convergence, www.convergence.com.
Related News
--Wisconsin Pushing E911 Legislation
--HBF Introduces E911 Solution for Non-Did Callers
--U.S. Appeals Court Stays Order Regarding New E911 Standards for Mobile Carriers
--U.S. Senate Passes Law Requiring all VoIP Providers to Offer E911 Service
--911 Enable's New Emergency Gateway Provides Advanced E911 Service for Enterprise IP Phone Systems
Mae Kowalke is senior editor for TMCnet, covering VoIP, CRM, call center and wireless technologies. To read more of Mae’s articles, please visit her columnist page. She also blogs for TMCnet here.
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Voice over IP (VoIP) | X |
A real-time communications system that converts voice into digital packets containing media and signaling data that travel over networks using Internet Protocol....more |
Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) | X |
SIP is the real-time communication protocol for VoIP. SIP is a signaling protocol for Internet conferencing, telephony, presence, events notification (emergency calling) and instant messaging.
SIP...more |
Session Border Controller (SBC) | X |
According to one end user, "The primary function of the SBC is to serve, basically, as a SIP aware NATing Firewall." Session Controllers or SBC are access devices operating at Layer 5 - Session Layer...more |
Internet Protocol (IP) | X |
IP stands for Internet Protocol, a data-networking protocol developed throughout the 1980s. It is the established standard protocol for transmitting and receiving data
in packets over the Internet. I...more |