Media Gateway and Softswitch Come Together

CopperCom, which bought up voice switch vendor DTI earlier this year, is wheeling out its first melding of CopperCom's media gateway with DTI's softswitch.

Called LeXSS (pronounced lex-iss) the merged devices will build on the ability of the CopperCom Gateway to take packet voice off broadband access networks and put it on circuit switched networks. Rather than convert the traffic for a traditional local voice switch, LeXSS will do so for a software switch from DTI.

Initially, LeXSS will appear as two separate chassis, but early next year they will be integrated, CopperCom says. The goal is to give upstart carriers the ability to deliver bundled voice and data services over broadband access lines at a much lower capital cost than traditional packet and data switches require.

When the two chassis are integrated early next year, CopperCom also will integrate the ability to terminate voice over DSL traffic. Also at that time CopperCom will add a full complement of features that are standard with traditional local phone switches. LeXSS will have more than 50 of these features including caller ID, automatic callback, call waiting, call forwarding and call transfer.

In the second quarter of 2001, LeXSS will be able to perform voice over packet trunking. Initially, the switch can trunk voice only from a packet access line to a circuit switched network. Packet trunking will support taking packet voice from an access network and trunking it to either a circuit switched network or a packet network such as ATM or IP.

CopperCom gear has interoperability with customer-site equipment made by 40 different vendors. That interoperability will be extended to include support for session initiation protocol or an extension of it that will be able to set up voice calls over packet networks, CopperCom says.www.coppercom.com