Dear Colleague,

Welcome to another issue of RAD at a Glance, the newsletter from RAD Data Communications about developments in the communications industry.

ACCESS TRENDS

Relief for Contact Centers' Network Migration Pains
by Larry Jacobs
Vice President of Marketing, RAD Data Communications, Inc.

Conventional wisdom says that as contact centers distribute their workload to remotely located centers or through links to outsourced facilities, new communications network technologies - especially VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) - can vastly improve their efficiency and keep costs down. The migration to VoIP networks, in which all data traffic and voice calls are carried over the same network infrastructure, is one of the biggest trends among corporations worldwide. Eliminating the parallel networks used by so many organizations, with one network exclusively for voice and the other for data, by converging them into one reduces network costs, equipment costs and ongoing maintenance.

For some contact centers, however, there is a hidden cost to this migration. As efficient as these new networks may be, thanks to their ability to carry all traffic over standardized packet network connections, there is one thing they cannot do. They cannot handle the voice traffic from traditional, or legacy, equipment such as PBXs, automatic call distributors or predictive dialers.

Traditional equipment transmits voice calls in a TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) format that is not compatible with new IP packet networks. As a result, moving to these new networks typically requires the purchase of new voice equipment, a huge investment for a contact center operation. That is a big enough hurdle to keep many companies from migrating to an IP network and taking advantage of its benefits.

Fortunately, an oddly named technology - pseudowire - has been developed to allow traditional voice equipment to communicate, in its own "language," over IP networks. It functions like a special channel, or wire, through the IP network, carrying the TDM traffic between PBXs or other traditional equipment. It takes the traditional voice traffic and segments and compresses it into packets that are accepted by the IP network and carried to their destinations. Once received by the pseudowire equipment at the far end, the original voice traffic is reconstructed and delivered to the PBX/ACD in the format that it understands.

Rather than have to abandon their traditional voice equipment, contact centers can take advantage of pseudowire to continue to get their money's worth out of the equipment in which they have made a considerable investment. When they feel they have fully leveraged their investment, then they can purchase IP-ready gear. Pseudowire buys the time needed for a contact center to make an unforced decision about when their traditional equipment needs replacing.

Two companies that faced this type of network migration decision and have been using pseudowire effectively are TecNet and Teleperformance USA. TecNet is a subsidiary of TEC (Telephone Electronics Corp.) and provides interexchange carrier and international call center services, through shared usage call centers in countries such as India and the Philippines. As it added international voice trunking capacity to accommodate growing remote call center applications, TecNet saw pseudowire's potential for further reducing expenses through voice compression.

Installing pseudowire equipment enabled 16:1 compression - twice as many calls per circuit as it had been getting. TecNet doubled its capacity without additional line charges. The result was savings of about $96,000 per year for each voice circuit.

Teleperformance USA had similar success. As one of the largest contact center outsourcers in the U.S., it was looking to expand its offshore operations in Argentina and the Philippines and set up centers that could handle hundreds of simultaneous calls serving the U.S. market. The company's operations centers in Salt Lake City and Seattle installed pseudowire equipment and gained cost-saving 16:1 compression on its international circuits.

Teleperformance USA was able to put its offshore centers into operation quickly and keep control of its telecommunications costs. Although the company still uses traditional circuits for its voice traffic, it is in the process of migrating to an IP network, an easy process since the pseudowire equipment already in place can handle either TDM or IP WAN connections.

Pseudowire can also be used to establish a backup connection for a remote call center. This can be an IP network backup for a traditional T1 or E1 connection, or vice versa, with a traditional circuit backing up a new IP network.

The voice compression capabilities of the pseudowire equipment are of particular interest to contact centers whose networks include offshore centers. Unless it is controlled, the high cost of international leased lines can wipe out the savings gained by locating a center offshore.

For instance, if one circuit to India costs $5,000 a month, and that circuit is capable of carrying 30 simultaneous telephone calls, a contact center operator might need 10 such circuits - at a hefty $50,000 a month - to guarantee capacity for a 300-agent call center. Pseudowire's 16:1 compression makes it possible to more than meet that center's needs using just a single circuit.

Telecommunications costs are a significant part of most any contact center operation's ongoing budget. Keeping those costs down through a migration to IP networking is a sensible strategy. With pseudowire available to keep traditional equipment from becoming an obstacle, there is no reason to resist what is essentially an inevitable evolution.

GENERAL NEWS

RAD Joins as Founding Partner in Panlab Collaboration Platform

RAD Data Communications has become a founding partner in Panlab - the Pan-European Laboratory for Next Generation Networks and Services. The EU-funded research project was formed to enable laboratories across Europe to collaborate in the area of next generation telecommunications networks and services, in order to improve and accelerate infrastructure and service testing. Full story

RAD and BroadLight Join Forces to Offer Pseudowire "Triple Play" Solution for GPON Networks

RAD Data Communications has completed interoperability testing of its TDM pseudowire technology with BroadLight, a leading vendor of PON (passive optical network) solutions. Using the companies' combined technologies, service providers will be able to deploy GPON (gigabit PON) fiber access networks that support "triple play" voice, video and data applications and T1/E1 voice, leased line and Frame Relay services. Full story

Prof. Daniel Kofman Appointed RAD CTO

A world-renowned expert in new networking technologies and telecommunications systems, who serves as the scientific coordinator of the Euro-NGI research effort on Next Generation Internet, has been named RAD's Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Full story

SUCCESS STORIES

RAD Helps Yipes Accelerate Growth by Extending Ethernet over Legacy Networks

Yipes Enterprise Services, Inc., the leading global provider of managed, end-to-end Ethernet solutions for enterprise customers, and RAD Data Communications, a world leader in Carrier Ethernet access solutions, are working together to extend Yipes Ethernet services across leased DS-3 and OC-3 facilities. Full story

RAD Announces Three Major Pseudowire Circuit Emulation Deployments in Russia

RAD Data Communications, the industry leader in legacy-over-packet switched networks, sees a growing trend in Russia towards pseudowire circuit emulation solutions over IP, Ethernet and MPLS backbones.
Full story

Colorado WISP Extends Network Reach and Capacity Cost-Effectively Using RAD's RIC Products

Mesa Networks, which provides wireless broadband connectivity in the U.S. state of Colorado, has selected interface converters from RAD Data Communications to increase the bandwidth available for provisioning business-class Ethernet services and to offer those services out-of-footprint. Full story

NEW PRODUCT

IPmux-14 Pseudowire Gateway

RAD Data Communications has released version 2 of its IPmux-14 TDM pseudowire gateway, which supplies Ethernet, TDM and HDLC-based services over packet switched networks (PSNs). HDLC-based services include Frame Relay, X.25 and transparent PPP transmission. Using RAD's patented TDM over IP (TDMoIP®) technology for transparent voice and data, the IPmux-14 TDM pseudowire gateway enables carriers and service providers to take advantage of the popular new IP/Ethernet/MPLS networks to deliver TDM-based voice, fax, modem, and data services without compromising traditional PSTN quality. HDLC pseudowires support HDLC-based data with bandwidth optimization by suppressing HDLC idle flags. More details on IPmux-14

Optimux-34 E3 Fiber Multiplexer

The Optimux-34 E3 fiber multiplexer provides a simple and cost effective solution for transporting up to 16 E1 links over distances up to 110 km (69 miles). The main link interface of the E1 version of the Optimux-34 fiber multiplexer can be either a standard coax E3 interface or a fiber optic interface. Optical interfaces include 1310 nm and 1550 nm laser for extended range over single mode fiber and 1310 nm and 1550 nm long haul for extended range over a fiber pair. More details on Optimux-34

WHAT'S NEW ON-LINE

New Web Sites

RAD provides standards-based Ethernet access solutions with carrier-class performance, security and resiliency. Visit RAD's new Ethernet Access Web site at www.ethernetaccess.com

We are also pleased to announce that our new RAD India Web site has now gone live. Check it out at www.raddata.in

New Audio Presentations

We recently posted a new audio presentation entitled "Business Opportunities with SHDSL Products," which can be accessed here

Pseudowire Site

Visitors to RAD’s pseudowire site are now able to search for solutions according to network technology, network topology or vertical market. Check out the Solution Search on the lower right side of the pseudowire site home page at www.pseudowire.com.

Sincerely,
Reuven Eliaz
Editor, RAD Data Communications