AdvancedTCA analysis for 3G networks

December 14, 2004

Major wireless equipment manufacturers are poised to adopt the emerging Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture standard, as they work to capture the benefits of modular, off-the-shelf hardware platforms, finds a new report from the subscription research service Unstrung Insider.

The report -- ATCA for 3G Wireless Networks - provides an overview of ATCA technology and discusses its suitability and potential for carrier-grade mobile network applications, including radio network controllers, packet gateways, softswitch MSCs, IMS, and media servers. The second part of the report analyzes key ATCA platform and board vendor strategies for the wireless sector and reports on equipment provider plans to adopt ATCA.

"Equipment manufacturers will port products to ATCA at varying rates, with attention initially focused on control-plane applications," says the report's author, Unstrung Insider analyst Gabriel Brown. "In the short term, there are concerns over the maturity of the ATCA standards and over the ecosystem that will supply boards, platforms, and software modules into the market."

"The largest vendors don't see any cost advantage to ATCA today," Brown adds. "The real interest is in the long-term migration to open platforms across product lines."

Among the report's key findings:

-- NEC leads the market with its ATCA-based xGSN product, which has shipped over 100 units this year.

-- We expect at least two major vendors to ship ATCA-based core and edge network elements in 2005; look for news from Siemens, Alcatel, and Huawei.

-- The service/application layer and IMS control layer will migrate to ATCA relatively quickly due to synchronicity of product development cycles, but several leading vendors will retain other blade server architectures for these applications.

-- Very early adopters of ATCA tend to fall into two camps: startups lacking legacy baggage or established vendors lacking a competitive platform on which they can maintain a competitive rate of product development.

-- The ATCA ecosystem is not yet sufficiently developed at the board, platform, or software level.

-- We see broad market adoption from 2007 onwards but believe the market will take longer than that to fully mature.

-- Network operators are aware of the potential benefits of ATCA in terms of operational expenditures, upgradeability, and vendor flexibility, but their enthusiasm is tempered by caution over the reliability and lifespan of commercial hardware.