UMTS migration to 3G networks

July 23, 2004

Tekelec, a developer of telecommunications products for fixed, mobile, and packet networks, announced the availability of UMTS capabilities on the company’s Tekelec 8000 Wireless Multimedia Gateway (MG) to support wireless operators transitioning to 3G networks.

As part of Tekelec’s partnership with Spatial Wireless, the wireless media gateway is incorporated into Spatial Wireless’ highly successful Spatial Atrium distributed switching solution. Tekelec 8000 Wireless MG has been deployed and trialed extensively by tier one mobile operators and by carriers in wireline Class 4 and 5 networks.

The Tekelec 8000 Wireless MG provides mobile operators with a true next-generation design based on 3rd Generation Partnership Program (3GPP) Release 4 standard for GSM, UMTS, and CDMA networks. In addition, the solution provides mobile operators with the advantages of subscriber scalability, flexibility in system deployment, and significantly reduced capital and operating costs. The Tekelec 8000 Wireless MG seamlessly evolves as mobile operators migrate from GSM to UMTS to all-Internet protocol (IP) 3G core. It provides significant flexibility and scalability advantages in a time division multiplexing (TDM), asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), and/or IP environment.

"We are progressing rapidly and seeing significant results from our partnership with Spatial Wireless," said Fred Lax, Tekelec president and CEO. "With the addition of UMTS capabilities to the Tekelec 8000 and our ability to support multi-protocol 3GPP Release 4 architecture in GSM, CDMA, and UMTS environments, we are well positioned to support the growing needs of mobile operators as they increase network capacity and deliver next-generation features to subscribers."

Pardeep Kohli, president and CEO of Spatial Wireless, added, "We are encouraged by the positive feedback from our mobile operator customers that have already realized the many benefits of our Spatial Atrium core network solution and advanced architecture."

About Tekelec 8000 Wireless MG

The Tekelec 8000 Wireless MG is a media gateway created to address the most stringent networking requirements for flexibility and adaptability to work with existing or new network build-outs. With its combination of switching and adaptation functions, the gateway supports any combination of TDM, ATM, and IP traffic, any port, any service, and any signaling. The Tekelec 8000 offers 40 high-density card slots. While each service interface card offers a wealth of switching and adaptation functionality, additional functions and capacity can be added on-line. Designed around a robust architecture with no single point of failure, the Tekelec 8000 can be independently engineered in combinations from one to 64 nodes per switching system. Any combination of these components can be placed within a centralized or distributed architecture.

Unlike typical media gateways, the 8000 series has the built-in intelligence to recognize network failures and compute new routes for in-progress calls - ensuring that the calls are maintained. Furthermore, it provides virtual media gateway functionality for geographical redundancy in case of catastrophic outages at the call control layer (a 3GPP requirement).