New business technology leading the trend-Softswitch Technology

IP Phones carried by the softswitch system are regarded as the new business technology that leads the trend in the new telecom era. By carrying voice and data services on an IP network, traditional Telecom Operators and emerging telecom operators can provide users with multimedia information services with great value-added highlights at lower operating costs, in order to meet the user's increasing communication needs and new requirements for continuously reducing the self-paid standards.

This argument is not recent. Since the date of the proposal of softswitch, the developers of softswitch have continuously conceived various possible new services, the unified bearer platform of softswitch can create new communication miracles for operators and even users and equipment manufacturers. Therefore, it is not surprising that there is still a large market even when people are passionate about Softswitch from the beginning to the extreme decline in the recent year 12 s.

Since the date that Softswitch was proposed, the manufacturers of softswitch devices have never stopped promoting the technical advantages of various carriers and looking forward to their business prospects, the attitude towards Softswitch is also fluctuating with the hot and cold nature of SoftSwitch. Among them, operators are particularly worried about the quality of the IP Phone carried on the softswitch platform. Because the traditional circuit-based voice quality is very reliable, and a fixed mode has been formed in the hearts of users, if the voice quality provided by Softswitch is unsatisfactory, the impact on traditional services will still be relatively large.

At present, although the voice service is declining globally, and the share of the operator's entire revenue share is also declining, however, it is undeniable that the voice service is still the vast majority of the revenue of operators, especially traditional operators. It is also a coveted part of the emerging operator's expectation to use the Softswitch technology to cut into the traditional voice service field, therefore, the quality of this service is a matter of great importance for new and old operators. For example, when IP phones were just emerging, people were full of enthusiasm for IP phones and satisfied with their low-cost policies compared with traditional phones. However, with the use of telephones, it is found that the voice quality of IP phones is far inferior to that of traditional phones, especially the delay and jitter in the early stage. Therefore, users complained and asked the operator to provide the same IP phone number as the traditional voice service.

According to relevant investigation and analysis, the manufacturers of softswitch devices have achieved remarkable success in the replacement market of four types of switches. As Europe's leading VoIP advocate and promoter, telecom Italy, as early as March last October, it was declared that all its voice communication between Rome and Milan was carried by IP, and its communication equipment was provided by Italtel and Cisco ). In addition, the company hopes to use IP addresses for all international calls at the end of this year. In Europe, as of now, some five-class switch solutions for Softswitch have been recognized by some carriers. Such as FastWeb in Italy, Comunitel in Spain, Telef ónica in Germany, and Kingston communication companies in the UK. These companies are the chaser of bundled voice and data services, services carried by Softswitch are used in their communication networks.

Although the application of softswitch has made some achievements, the current market share shows that the replacement market of the traditional five-type switch is far greater than that of the four-type switch market. If the manufacturer of softswitch equipment can seize the replacement market of five types of switches to ensure that such businesses with high service quality requirements can carry data through the softswitch platform, then the operator will be able to gradually confirm and begin to use the so-called next-generation network technology to complete device replacement and upgrade, so that the operator's expected network cost can be effectively reduced and the emergence of new value-added streams can make up for the loss of PSTN voice business revenue to a large extent. Although the prospects are not as good as people think, devices in softswitch still think that this idea is a bit similar to "chicken and eggs ", once people's understanding of softswitch passes through the ups and downs, it will soon be recognized by people.

In the actual operation process, if emerging operators want to provide voice services to users, the operation business must also consider providing data services at the same time. With the development of people's communication needs, the Data Services advocated and guided by operators have gradually become deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. If emerging operators still focus on providing a single voice service, or a single data service, with the rapid development and changes in the user's consumption mind, it will soon be unable to meet the user's needs. Therefore, in order to maximize investment savings in traditional business and emerging data service fields, the focus of emerging operators is, of course, a unified platform that can simultaneously carry voice services and data services. As a result, VoIP phones are also emerging, in particular, the softswitch platform that provides both voice and data services has aroused great interest of operators. At the same time, as it is possible to effectively increase the profit margin for operators and provide users with better and cheaper services, in addition, the access part of the user end may share the resources of the two networks to the maximum extent, which also greatly promotes and promotes the development of the softswitch market.

According to the investigation by some international institutions on the IP address voice quality, the improvement of the IP address phone voice quality can reach the current quality level of traditional voice phones. However, for China, there are still many factors related to the voice quality of IP phones, which need to be addressed from multiple parties. For example, with the progress of the broadband process, major operators have increased their competition for the resident network market, and the price war has become increasingly fierce. In order to gain market share in more places, the general quality of twisted pair wires for integrated cabling is a secret, and there will inevitably be some gaps between these quality cables and the testing results of relevant international institutions. In addition, other similar problems need to be considered by operators, because after all, there are still some differences between the test results and the actual network environment in a competitive environment.

Therefore, although Softswitch has various advantages and business prospects, it is not as easy as you think. For large operators, especially traditional voice service operators, they need to use Softswitch products to replace existing equipment. The first problem is the investment return and depreciation and utilization of original equipment. After all, after the adoption of the softswitch platform, the more mature business is still limited to the voice service, and the video service is the "little talent exposed tip ". Therefore, it is necessary to invest a lot in using the softswitch platform to replace existing traditional equipment, and the services provided to users are still the same or even inferior voice services in the past, it is difficult for operators to make decisions. Moreover, for Softswitch, the true intention is not to enable Softswitch, but not to integrate different service networks. As an important technology in the Next Generation Network, Softswitch aims to smoothly integrate different networks as much as possible during the next evolution of different existing networks, to integrate network resources and business resources to the maximum extent. According to the evolution and R & D of the existing Softswitch technology and equipment, there are still large problems in the softswitch products and interconnectivity between different manufacturers, in addition, there are still some issues to be resolved regarding the softswitch standard. Among the solutions proposed by many Softswitch manufacturers, equipment providers simply use intelligent network devices as an application layer of SoftSwitch. In fact, as a technology evolved from intelligent network, Softswitch is similar to intelligent network in terms of technical thinking. Currently, whether it is the fixed network-based intelligent network, China Mobile's CAMEL-based intelligent network, or China Unicom's WIN-based Intelligent Network, network investment and service composition of major operators are all very important. If, in the process of softswitch application country, the intelligent network part is simply added to the softswitch platform as a part of the application, the reuse of the existing intelligent network is very small, in addition, in some aspects, it is not consistent with the existing Softswitch ideology. Therefore, at this stage, major equipment manufacturers should consider how to apply Softswitch products on the existing intelligent network platform. At the same time, in addition to the transformation and Utilization of the hardware platform, we should also consider how the application services interface Through PARLAY can be migrated from the existing intelligent service layer to the softswitch layer, instead of simply using the relevant interface, simple and intelligent networks form an organizational structure similar to the overlay network.

1. Application of softswitch in emerging carriers
2. Next Generation Network (NGN): Research Progress of Softswitch Technology
3. Analysis of softswitch features, construction scheme and Operation Strategy