MCI plans to deploy Ericsson's Engine solution to migrate its US-based international gateway traffic from traditional circuit switching to VoIP. MCI expects to begin transitioning traffic by mid 2005.
MCI's Engine deployment includes the Ericsson Telephony Server (TeS), which serves as the voice gateway controller and signaling gateway, and the Ericsson Media Gateway (MGW) as the VoIP media path converters. The Media Gateways (MGW) will packetize voice streams that come from the legacy TDM network for transport across the IP backbone. Likewise, MGWs will also convert VoIP packets back to TDM voice streams for transport across the PSTN. Also, by providing MCI with the capability to interconnect existing VoIP networks with SIP and H.323, Engine will also provide MCI the flexibility to connect with global carriers to exchange VoIP traffic regardless of protocol preference.
Financial terms were not disclosed. http://www.ericsson.com/presshttp://www.mci.com
- In June 2004, MCI outlined a Converged Packet Access (CPA) strategy for its business customers that leverages Ethernet and MPLS. The architecture aims to consolidate all services - Frame Relay, Private IP, IP VPN, Ethernet, Private Line, and voice - onto a single, customer Ethernet interface (10bT, 100bT and Gig E). Once an initial physical connection is established, MCI customers can logically provision capacity and services as needed without requiring physical changes to the network. MPLS tunneling technology is utilized to create logical channels that securely separate customer's services.
MCI's CPA architecture has four key components: (1) an Ethernet traffic aggregator; (2) a new Layer 2 and TDM grooming infrastructure; (3) an optical add-drop multiplexer; and (4) a packet-enabled service edge. This equipment allows MCI to aggregate traffic originating from one large business customer or many small business customers in a multi-tenant business building across a single, secure network access circuit. MCI is using an Ethernet over SONET infrastructure.
