Three Call Management Servers Among 5 New PacketCable™ Certified/Qualified Devices

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CableLabs® awarded PacketCable™ qualified status to a media gateway controller (MGC) from Cisco Systems and three more call management servers (CMSs) during Certification Wave 27. The achievement of qualified status by a media gateway controller is another important step in the cable industry’s PacketCable initiative that provides cable operators with an end-to-end solution for the delivery of voice services using Internet Protocol (IP). A total of five PacketCable™ devices were certified or qualified in Certification Wave 27.

The three companies achieving qualified status for CMSs are Cedar Point, Cisco, and Telcordia; Scientific-Atlanta received certification for an embedded multimedia terminal adapter (E-MTA). There have now been 23 devices certified/qualified in four PacketCable certification events.

The MGC provides critical call signaling functionality to facilitate off-net calling in a PacketCable network, and communicates with other call control elements such as the CMS and signaling gateway to manage and control connections to the public switched telephone network (PSTN). It instructs the media gateway how to establish physical connections to the PSTN to allow voice calls to originate from and terminate on the cable IP network.

“The cable industry has more PacketCable-based field trials under way at this point in time than ever, and it now has end-to-end elements of the PacketCable network certified as conforming to the CableLabs specifications,” said Cameron Gough, Vice President of Advanced Voice Services, Comcast Cable Communications. “The industry is well positioned to move out with this technology,” he added.

The CMS functions as a “soft-switch” in the PacketCable architecture and performs many critical functions necessary for voice communications, including connection management, implementation of subscriber features, and call accounting.

PacketCable is a CableLabs-led initiative to define a common platform to deliver advanced real-time communication services, such as VoIP, over two-way cable plant. Built on top of the industry’s DOCSIS® 1.1 (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specifications) cable modem infrastructure, PacketCable networks use IP technology as the basis for a multimedia architecture. A DOCSIS 1.1 network with PacketCable extensions enables cable operators to deliver data and voice traffic efficiently and economically using a single high-speed, quality-of-service (QoS)-enabled broadband architecture.

The PacketCable initiative has followed a similar process to that employed in the successful DOCSIS program. Manufacturers that receive CableLabs certification or qualification for their MTA, CMTS, CMS, MGC, or MG, have successfully completed an extensive series of interoperability tests supported by CableLabs membership. These PacketCable devices were tested for interoperability in combination with other PacketCable components.

As part of the certification test process, vendors were asked to work in CableLabs facilities in pre-market, pre-competitive testing and evaluation in order to demonstrate compliance with the industry-supported program and technology.

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