The soft-switch, developed at the Motorola's research and development centre in Bangalore, is now being offered to other operators worldwide. |
Sunil Kulkarni, general manager, marketing and business development, Motorola India said, "This is the first deployment by any cellular and basic operator. While soft-switch has been set up by long distance operators, for access providers it has to be developed not just for voice communication but also for data." |
While Motorola is talking to other CDMA-based operators for the soft-switch, the Bangalore centre with 200 researchers, is now working on making the technology available to GSM-based cellular players. |
"Soft-switches for GSM operators will have to have features like pre-paid cards and sim card. We expect that such features will be developed in the next year," Kulkarni said. |
A soft-switch is essentially a software which does the work of a traditional circuit switching hardware. Compared to switches being used by the existing operators, a soft-switch makes deployment of new applications much faster. |
"Traditional switches take about 18 months to adapt to new applications and features for the mobile user. The same can be done on soft-switch at one-fifth of the time. In a competitive world, this kind of time lead brings great cost benefits for the operator," Kulkarni said. |
Other advantages of a soft-switch include offering flexibility to operators while ramping up the network. It also requires less room and less power to operate. |
"The advantages translate into potential savings for operators including lower capital expenditure. These are appealing in emerging markets and for green field operators as well. It is projected that soft-switches would outnumber traditional circuit switches by 2012," Kulkarni added. |
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