Europe : Tatara Systems, Inc., a developer of converged mobile service solutions for communications service providers, will attend this year’s Wireless LAN Event and highlight a range of new capabilities it has developed to benefit service providers including an IP Multimedia Subsystems (IMS)-compliant solution for fixed mobile convergence voice and data services.

Inset is Tatara Systems’ CEO Steve Nicolle who is quoted below.

IMS, based on Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is becoming a standard through the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), a global co-operation between the world’s major standardisation bodies. 3GPP has achieved broad and general endorsement as the next-generation IP multimedia services architecture across major communications service provider segments.

Part of Tatara Mobile Services Convergence Platform, the new IMS capability will allow service providers to extend IMS to non-3G network types, including WLAN, DSL, cable, and WiMAX.

One of the first fixed mobile convergence solutions being offered by Tatara is SMS over IP, which allows communications service providers to seamlessly handoff SMS traffic from their legacy circuit network to an IP network (e.g. over WLAN). This enables ‘one number’ access to all SMS based services such as message indication, business services, and entertainment applications when the user is on the IP network. This same solution is capable of supporting the roll-out of other voice and data services, including one number voice, MMS, WAP, and location-based services.

Tatara’s IMS solution consists of the Tatara Subscriber Gateway between the access network and the IMS core, and the Tatara Service Manager SDK which resides on today’s laptops and PDAs and emerging dual-mode handset and smartphone platforms such as Windows Mobile and Symbian.

The key capabilities of the Tatara IMS solution include:

• Packet Data Gateway (PDG) functionality for secure tunneling and termination of voice and data services (bearer and signaling),
• Authentication server enabling integrated billing and services,
• SIP Proxy allowing functions such as integrated CDR generation and QoS enforcement,
• Presence and location management in the HLR/HSS, and
• Cross-network mobility management for seamless handoff with WLAN networks.

The Tatara solution enables voice and data services that work securely and simply through network address translation and firewalls as well as when the user is on a virtual private network. This allows the service provider to address both the consumer and enterprise market over both public networks, owned and roamed, and private networks. The Tatara solution has been validated by several large infrastructure vendors as complementing IMS core elements such as Call State Control Functions (CSCFs), signalling gateways, media gateways, and media gateway controllers as part of an overall IMS solution architecture.

The Tatara solution also complements large infrastructure vendors providing pre-IMS fixed mobile convergence services over today’s networks. This includes solving many of the specific service delivery and service consistency challenges associated with launching fixed mobile convergence services to the enterprise and consumer markets.

“There's a great deal of discussion about seamless mobility of services and applications between circuit and packet networks such as WLAN,” said Mark Lowenstein, managing director of Mobile Ecosystem and a leading expert on the wireless and mobile communications industry. “And users with dual-mode devices will want access to the same feature set whether they are on a circuit or IP network.”

Tatara’s customer base, which includes many world-class service providers such as Vodafone, TELUS, and VeriSign, can leverage their existing Tatara Mobile Services Convergence Platform, providing converged connectivity services across WAN/3G and WLAN today, to offer advanced IMS-compliant services well into the future. These customers now have the option to deploy new fixed mobile convergence services in a pre-IMS environment, and since the product is IMS-compliant, they have the comfort of knowing they can upgrade the solution to an IMS environment when they are ready.

Tatara Systems’ CEO Steve Nicolle said: “Our solution fully supports voice but true convergence goes beyond that. Our customers are telling us that they want converged voice and data services with the same quality and features available today over both 3G and non-3G networks. Our solution fills a key critical piece of the IMS solution and complements core IMS solutions provided by large infrastructure vendors.”