Motorola lines up soft switch for Tata Tele

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.