Austin, Texas – General Bandwidth, a leading telecommunications equipment provider enabling carriers to deliver enhanced voice services over broadband networks, has recently completed development for full SIP and PRI support within its G6 Packet Telephony Migration Platform.

SIP is expected by many industry observers to be the dominant protocol used in Voice over IP networks. With support for SIP, the G6 platform can be used in conjunction with a SIP feature server to provide a wide range of traditional Centrex and other exciting new features , giving carriers a robust, scalable platform from which to host IP telephony services to a wide array of customers.

“With the addition of SIP in the G6 platform, carriers now have a very compelling platform to provide IP Centrex on a broad scale to grow their enterprise customer base,” said Brendon Mills, CEO of General Bandwidth. “By deploying the G6 platform with their network, carriers can finally compete at a fraction of the cost and with a feature set that is equally as rich as any IP PBX.”

General Bandwidth has been working with the industry's premier SIP-based feature server companies to ensure full, standards-based interoperability and together, the G6 platform and SIP feature servers provide for a rich array of next generation service creation capabilities. New features can include advanced call screening, single number service, click-to-call, dial from directories, voice & email integration, as well as legacy Class 5 and other new services. IP Centrex can now be hosted from the carrier's own network, rather than relying on expensive, small scale third parties to provide such services.

Previous implementations of SIP gateways lacked the carrier class attributes such as redundancy, high reliability, and scalability to serve the needs of large carriers. The G6 platform is fully optimized for mass deployments of hosted communications services . Built for large carrier environments, the G6 platform offers 99.999% availability and meets or exceeds the most stringent requirements for central office environments, including NEBS Level 3 certification, as well as passing all ILEC extended NEBS certification tests. With the G6 platform, carriers can finally deploy IP Centrex with full confidence in the network platform.

The SIP/PRI functionality builds upon General Bandwidth's Next Generation Network (NGN) software release which now provides full support for interoperability with leading packet voice solutions such as MGCP/H.248-based softswitches and SIP-based feature servers in addition to support for derived voice services from legacy Class 5 switches through GR-303/TR-008 and V5.2 interfaces. While the General Bandwidth G6 platform has been used extensively by both domestic and international carriers as a circuit-to-packet gateway for “Class 5-derived” Voice over FTTP/PON, Cable, and Packet T1/DSL services, carriers now have the capability to simultaneously deploy VoIP services from the same carrier-class platform while supporting calls from multiple softswitches and features servers. The NGN software also includes support for RFC2833 with Named Telephony Events (NTE) enabling full Class 5 feature capabilities over VoIP such as voice mail indicator and flash hook-based features as well as support for low bit rate codecs such as G.729e to provide better bandwidth utilization across the carrier's network. With the NGN software's capability to support multiple applications, the G6 platform lets carriers offer a wide array of new revenue-generating services including converged voice and data services over both ATM or IP, making the G6 a “must-have” in diverse carrier networks.

About General Bandwidth

General Bandwidth's flagship G6 Packet Telephony Migration platform is currently in live service within major U.S. ILECs, as well as many other carriers, a testament to its scalability and carrier grade design. The G6 enables service providers to deploy voice over broadband technology to cost-effectively deliver voice services over their existing broadband infrastructure and provide a migration path to end-to-end packet networks. www.genband.com

Contact:
General Bandwidth
Tabitha Bailey
+1.805.241.2532

Tabitha.bailey@genband.com