Alcatel agreed to acquire Spatial Wireless, a start-up offering software-based and multi-standard distributed mobile switching solutions, for approximately US$250 million (approx. EUR 205 million) in Alcatel American Depositary Shares (ADS).
Spatial's flagship product, Spatial Atrium, is a multi-standard mobile softswitch that controls distributed media gateways and manages call/session control for voice and data services. It works seamlessly in GSM/EDGE, 3G/UMTS and CDMA networks. It also enables an evolution to 3GPP Release 5 and Release 6 networks via software-only upgrades. The company said that its network architecture allows a mobile operator to invest in only a few Mobile Call Servers spread though a limited number of centralized control sites located in its largest traffic zones, while having a larger number of lower-cost Media Gateways located close to the access network to switch the traffic locally. Spatial's distributed solution is in commercial use and in market trials, with major GSM and CDMA operators in the world, in particular in North America, China, and India - with over one million ports deployed in 2004.
Alcatel said the acquisition enables it to "leapfrog traditional mobile switching technologies with a commercially-available Next-Generation Networks (NGN) solution, designed and ready for IP Multimedia Subsystems (IMS)."http://www.alcatel.comhttp://www.spatialwireless.com
- Spatial Wireless is based in Richardson, Texas and has offices in India. The company has 225 employees.
- In March 2004, Alcatel announced an OEM agreement to deliver Spatial Wireless' Distributed Mobile Switching Center (DMSC) solutions as part of the Alcatel Evolium mobile infrastructure portfolio for North America.
- The Spatial Atrium DMSC solution operates in a distributed call server connected to a media gateway, managed by an element management system. It offers high capacity, multi-protocol core switch and services innovation that supports DMSC solutions. Furthermore, it allows network overlay deployments for Gateway Mobile Switching Center and network services solutions for GSM and UMTS networks.
