Table Of Contents
Softswitch Deployment—Transit Services
National and International Transport Services
Prepaid and Postpaid Calling Card Services
Termination Services for Telephony Application Service Providers
Voice Mail and Unified Communications Services
Solution Overview
Cisco Voice Infrastructure
and Applications Solution
Enabling a broad portfolio of packet-voice services
Executive SummarySince the mid-1990s, enterprises have been moving their telecommunication offerings from traditional voice networks—such as leased tie lines and private branch exchanges (PBXs)—to voice-over-IP (VoIP) technology. Today's forward-looking service providers and enterprises are choosing packet-based voice networks as the optimal way to deliver call transport services. Lower hardware and software costs, advances in voice quality of service (QoS), and the inherent scalability of these packet-based networks give service providers an advanced packet-based medium that both connects to and bypasses the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to transmit voice traffic.
The Cisco Voice Infrastructure and Applications (VIA) solution is an open, standards-based VoIP infrastructure that enables a broad portfolio of packet-voice services. It is designed for service providers that seek to increase revenue, build customer loyalty, and boost profits by adding call transport and a variety of other services such as pre- and postpaid calling card services and messaging to their service portfolios. This solution also lends itself well to carriers that offer international transit services. Support for industry-standard signaling protocols such as H.323, Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP), and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) make it easy to link a service provider's network with a large number of interconnect partners.
As service providers look for ways to expand their businesses, they are targeting enterprises with new and innovative services that cannot easily be offered using traditional time-division multiplexing (TDM) circuit-switching equipment. With minimal upgrades to existing packet-based data networks, service providers can use the Cisco VIA solution to open the door to new markets and a variety of new services (such as unified communications), increasing revenue by offering voice and data services on a common, packet-based infrastructure.
Market DynamicsEscalating demand for packet-voice traffic is caused by many factors, including rising demand for low-cost voice services, the availability of inexpensive international cross-border rates for IP service providers, and ambiguous regulations in international packet-based voice traffic. These factors are causing a shift from legacy TDM to packet-voice networks.
IP Telephony Services
Packet-voice services provide an attractive alternative to traditional, circuit-based, PSTN call transport services. The cost of delivering packet-voice calls is generally less than PSTN calls, as shown in Table 1.
Note: For up-to-date wholesale prices offered in the spot market, refer to the following site:
http://www.arbinet.com/default_frame.asp for both PSTN and VoIP spot ratesProbe Research (2002) estimates that worldwide VoIP transit traffic is growing from 12 billion minutes of use (MOU) in 2000 to over 900 billion MOU in 2007. International VoIP is growing from 6 billion MOU in 2000 to 123 billion MOU in 2007. In 2002, VoIP international traffic is estimated to be 18 billion minutes, or 13 percent of total international traffic. This represents an impressive increase from the late 1990s, when VoIP was less than one percent of the world's international traffic. Clearly, momentum is growing in this nascent market (refer to Figure 1).
Figure 1
International TDM and Voice-over-Packet Traffic (Probe Research, Inc., August 2002)
IP PBX Services
As enterprises adopt IP and IP PBX technology, service provider networks must adapt to customer needs. Figure 2 indicates the fast adoption of IP in the enterprise voice market, with IP-based systems growing from 9 percent in 2001 to 38 percent in 2005. This adoption represents a decisive shift that service providers seeking to provide business voice services cannot ignore.
Figure 2
IP U.S. Shipment Forecast (Yankee Group 12/01)
Softswitch Deployment—Transit Services
IP has moved into the transit space and will grow very quickly with burgeoning IP usage in the enterprise. To keep up with the demand for IP telephony transport from enterprise customers, Infonetics expects the number of transit softswitches deployed to grow significantly between 2000 and 2006, as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3
Revenue for Transit Softswitches Deployed Worldwide (Infonetics 2002)
VIA Supported ServicesThe Cisco service provider voice solutions are based on voice-over-packet technologies, where the underlying network may have an ATM or IP core. Protocol flexibility and an open, standards-based infrastructure in Cisco solutions allow operators to develop multiservice networks capable of carrying voice, data, and video on a multiservice platform. Although Cisco has many options for transport, the Cisco VIA solution is designed for IP networks.
Services enabled by Cisco VIA include national and international transport services, pre- and postpaid calling card services, termination services for telephony application service providers (ASPs), voice mail and unified communications, and dial access.
National and International Transport Services
With Cisco VIA, service providers can use packet-voice networks to transport traffic to just about any point in the world. Cisco's commitment to delivering flexible, standards-based solutions anchors a broad set of product offerings for the national and international call transport services market. Cisco VIA includes sophisticated routing mechanisms that automatically identify the most efficient and reliable routes to achieve superior network utilization, lowering capital expense requirements while extending market opportunities.
The Cisco VIA solution also enables service providers to provide reliable, high-quality toll and toll-free retail services to consumers and businesses and to partner with wholesale terminating carriers to transport voice traffic that originates on their networks.
Prepaid and Postpaid Calling Card Services
The Cisco VIA solution supports pre- and postpaid calling card services, including the following:
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Interactive-voice-response (IVR) capabilities, including support of standard voice Extended Markup Language (VXML) automated speech recognition (ASR) and text to speech (TTS) for increased customer service satisfaction
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Termination Services for Telephony Application Service Providers
Many of the world's largest wholesale voice carriers depend on the Cisco VIA solution to offer termination services to ASPs. This makes it possible for the ASPs to offer a broad variety of services such as PC-to-phone calls, phone-to-phone calls, and unified messaging services.
The Cisco VIA solution offers broad support for industry-standard signaling protocols, protecting service provider investments as technology shifts occur. Modular gateways accommodate a range of interconnect densities, allowing the solution to scale simply by adding extra line cards.
Voice Mail and Unified Communications Services
The Cisco VIA solution has a full range of messaging applications, including voice mail, unified messaging, and unified communication.
Voice-mail products offer the services of standard voice-mail functions except on an IP platform. Being IP based, service providers get the benefits of IP economics as well as a platform that can expand to include unified messaging, unified communication, instant messaging, multimedia messaging, and video messaging services.
Unified messaging gives ubiquitous access to voice, fax, and e-mail on various devices, including wireline or wireless phones, and Internet-enabled mobile and desktop platforms. Generally the messages are asynchronous in nature, where the messages are stored for later retrieval.
Unified communications includes unified messaging and adds various real-time, synchronous services such as single number reach (find me or follow me), rule-based call filtering, multimodal instant messaging, live reply, and personal attendant services.
Dial Access Services
Cisco VIA allows service providers to offer high-volume Internet access, regional and branch-office connectivity, and corporate virtual private networks (VPNs), in either a wholesale dial or retail dial business model. A wholesale dial service provider owns and operates the dial access infrastructure and leases ports to retail ISPs and enterprises. ISPs and enterprises benefit because they lease ports from the wholesale service provider rather than owning a capital-intensive infrastructure, and can focus on their core strengths: marketing and acquiring and managing customer relationships.
With support for guaranteed service-level agreements and the latest modem standards (V.92 and V.44), service providers can differentiate themselves, create additional revenue, and improve customer loyalty. With V.92 and V.44, dialup users experience: quicker connection to the Internet, faster downloading of Internet pages, and the ability to make or take calls while connected to the Internet.
Cisco Value PropositionCisco VIA enables service providers to take advantage of packet network investments by quickly building multiservice networks and deploying revenue-generating voice and data services. The solution combines manageability, scalability, reliability, and QoS to enable a wide selection of enhanced services. Cisco has the widest geographic deployment of packet-voice solutions, and the world's largest packet-voice networks are based on Cisco products and expertise (including China Unicom and iBasis). Key benefits to service providers are summarized as follows:
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Support for Multiple ProtocolsToday's packet telephony traffic traverses networks that rely on a variety of signaling protocols, including H.323, MGCP, and SIP. Recognizing the need for solutions that can interconnect and interoperate with other networks regardless of the signaling protocol used, Cisco voice gateways and the Cisco PGW 2200 softswitch support all these standard protocols.
Cisco's multiprotocol strategy has several facets. Cisco has implemented support for SIP in its gateway product lines that have existing support for H.323 and MGCP. This extension of Cisco gateway functionality has allowed Cisco to take advantage of the rich features of these gateways, including a broad variety of coder-decoder (codec) support, VXML, sophisticated QoS algorithms, and existing operations, administration, and maintenance (OA&M) capabilities.
Also, Cisco VIA supports the Cisco PGW 2200 softswitch, which allows for interconnecting H.323 and SIP while controlling the gateways using MGCP. This interconnection ensures that the core infrastructure will be flexible enough to evolve as service providers' needs change.
Architecture OverviewThe Cisco VIA solution offers a full range of products to support both distributed (H.323 and SIP) and centralized (MGCP) network architectures. Collectively, these products provide PSTN interconnect, call routing, call detail records (CDRs), and enhanced services such as IVR (VXML) and interconnect to intelligent network services. These and other solution components are described in Table 2. Refer to Figure 4 for an architecture diagram.
Table 2Cisco VIA Solution Details Components
Media gateways
Required in packet-voice networks
Cisco VIA supports a range of small to large-scale gateways that support a broad range of codecs for high-quality voice transit, as well as fax, modem, and dual tone multifrequency (DTMF) transit.
The gateways support an IVR function that provides voice prompts and digit collection or speech input for user authentication and call destination identification for applications such as pre- and postpaid calling card services. These products support standard VXML and customized Toolkit Command Language (TCL) scripts. Optional speech recognition and text-to-speech capabilities are available.
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H.323 gatekeepers
Optional
Used to scale larger H.323 wholesale networks, Cisco gatekeepers provide address translation, admission control, resource monitoring, bandwidth management, and zone management. These products offer cost-effective routing, resource management for increased availability, and support for alternate gatekeepers for greater reliability.
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H.323 directory gatekeepers
Optional
Used to scale a wholesale network to large sizes, directory gatekeepers provide inter-regional call routing. These products enable cost-effective scaling, with dedicated call throughput and alternate directory gatekeepers for increased reliability.
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Cisco SIP proxy servers
Optional
Used to scale SIP wholesale networks, Cisco SIP proxy servers provide route management and admission control.
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Softswitch
Required in MGCP networks
Used to provide centralized call control in MGCP networks, the softswitch provides number analysis, advanced routing, and carrier-class CDRs. Additionally, the softswitch supports an H.323 and SIP interface for interoperability with other IP-based networks. The signaling link terminal is integrated into the Cisco PGW 2200.
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Signaling controller
Optional
Used to provide a Signaling System 7 (SS7) interface for Cisco IOS® call control environments, the signaling controller allows SS7 connectivity to the Cisco IOS control gateway. The signaling controller provides ISDN User Part (ISUP) transparency for H.323 networks, and has limited signaling transparency for SIP networks. The signaling controller supports both A and F links and is ideal for small and large network deployments.
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Billing mediation servers
Recommended
Ecosystem partner OSS servers interface with Cisco gateway, gatekeeper, SIP proxy server, and PGW 2200 components through the various accounting interfaces used by these network elements.
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Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) servers
Optional
These servers are used to store audio files, Cisco IOS Software or configuration files, dial plans, and so on.
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Management systems
Optional
Both Cisco Internet OSS and third-party network management systems are supported, including element management systems and network management systems.
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Figure 4Voice Infrastructure and Applications Architecture
Cisco Internet OSS and Network Management SystemsService providers need robust management tools to lower network operational costs and to ensure the highest QoS to end-users. As an optional component to the VIA solution, Cisco offers a complete suite of Internet OSS and network management tools tailored specifically to the needs of service providers. The Cisco Internet OSS and network management solutions address three critical functions that can be used on an as-needed basis:
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Service and SupportIn today's increasingly complex marketplace, two things separate service providers that simply survive from those that succeed: time to market and operational efficiency. With this in mind, Cisco has created a comprehensive suite of support services designed to help service providers speed the development and release of revenue-generating products and improve the overall efficiency of network operations. Cisco Service and Support offerings help service providers prosper throughout the network life cycle by providing access to:
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Cisco is dedicated to providing best-of-class, end-to-end packet telephony networking solutions for anyone seeking to use IP to deliver and receive information, communication, and entertainment through data, voice, and video. Enabling a variety of applications, Cisco packet-voice solutions offer unmatched scalability, security, flexibility, and manageability. These solutions are backed by proven service and support programs designed to help service providers build, maintain, and profit from the deployment of world-class networks.
The Cisco Service Carrier Community ProgramSigning up business partners to terminate voice traffic in different countries is an important step in creating a viable wholesale call transport service. A wholesale provider must cover a comprehensive calling area if it is to attract many retail voice service providers. To terminate calls, a wholesale terminating carrier can work with in-country business partners that use the PSTN or a packet-voice network. It is not difficult for a wholesale packet-voice provider to demonstrate its value to a potential local partner, because the wholesaler brings additional traffic to the partner's network.
For service providers that want to grow their global footprint and increase voice traffic on their networks, the Cisco Service Carrier Community program offers business tools and partnering events that help members meet and exchange traffic. The program helps carriers establish worldwide interconnect relationships and business alliances throughout the carrier community. Additional information is available at http://www.cisco.com/go/cscc.
ConclusionThe Cisco VIA solution is the industry's most widely deployed VoIP infrastructure, with proven benefits to service providers that wish to offer traditional and new voice services on a packet-based network.
When building VoIP networks, it is critical to deploy a best-in-class, open, standards-based IP network to ensure that the network can evolve as end-users' needs change. Cisco VIA is that underlying architecture, and it is flexible enough to support multiple call control protocol options as well as new and traditional services for the assurance of investment protection and continued revenue generation.
Cisco is a Fortune 100 company with years of experience in providing service providers with packet networks that support both data and voice services. This solid position gives service providers confidence that they are dealing with a vendor that will be in this business for years to come.
For more information about the Cisco VIA solution, visit http://www.cisco.com/go/telephony.
