ZTE Corporation, a leading global provider of telecommunications equipment and network solutions, has delivered its first telecoms infrastructure equipment in the UK to Global e Networks, a new player on the European telecoms scene.

The ZTE Class 5 Softswitch system is being installed in London's Docklands telecoms hub, enabling Global e Networks to offer wholesale IP-based communications capabilities to the UK and European markets.

ZTE's Class 5 Softswitch allows telecommunications companies to implement the latest IP-enabled call controls and services on a distributed telephony basis, without any significant migration costs.

Robert Rees, director of Global e Networks, said that, thanks to ZTE's Softswitch technology, his company will offer a high quality portfolio of telecoms facilities to a wide range of third-party quality resellers.

"These facilities will embrace a variety of services that include voice, SMS, content, IP Centrex, advertising and audio-visual conferencing, all of which will be handled by ZTE's Softswitch technology," Rees explained. "The unique aspect of the Global e service – as well as offering an integrated portfolio of communications facilities such as full billing services to third-party resellers – is its advertising, sponsorship and branding potential."

Global e's VoIP Softphone can be downloaded to the user's desktop on demand in such a way that context-sensitive advertising, sponsorship and/or branding is presented to customers whenever they are using the Softphone dashboard client.

"As well as reinforcing the reseller's brand image, it also opens up the way for revenue-generating content, which in turn helps to keep our wholesale prices as sharp as possible," Rees explained.

Fang Rong, ZTE's senior vice president of European strategy, said that the Global e deal is the company's first major Softswitch sale in Western Europe and comes as a result of many months of hard work by ZTE's technical sales and engineering staff alongside their counterparts at Global e Networks.

"Global e's plans to offer the widest possible range of integrated telecoms services through multiple resellers is a win-win situation, both for ourselves and Global e, and, of course, the firm's reseller base and their clients," Ms Fang said.

What is a soft switch?

A softswitch is a central device in a telephone network, which connects calls from one phone line to another entirely using a software-driven computer system.

Until the 1960s, most exchanges used a step-by-step electro-mechanical technology known as Strowger, after the man who invented the system.

In the 1960s, Strowger-driven exchanges gave way to electronic matrix-driven systems known as switches. Although electronically driven under the guidance of software, the switches' flexibility was still held back by the hardware limitations.

Softswitches remove almost all these limitations by the simple expedient of directly controlling connections at the interface point between circuit and packet switched networks. The twin controlling elements are known as a Call Agent and a Media Gateway.

The Call Agent supervises functions such as billing, call routing, call services and signaling, A Call Agent can control more than one Media Gateway, even if the gateways are geographically dispersed. 

The Media Gateway, meanwhile, connects multiple types of digital media streams together to create a circuit pathway for the `call,' which can be either voice or data, or an integration of the two.

Because a softswitch can set up and release a given circuit, or set of circuits, in a few milliseconds, it is possible for the Call Agent and Media Gateway to re-route calls on a dynamic and highly flexible basis, transparent to the end user.

Thanks to this immense flexibility, a well-engineered softswitch can make the fullest use of all the available network components even to the extent of using optimum routing for all calls under changing switch load conditions.

Put simply, a softswitch makes the optimum use of all network components and helps to reduce call switching plus routing costs, whilst maximising overall revenues. It does this at all times with close to zero downtime.