General Bandwidth Offers Solution to Migrate Legacy Services

General Bandwidth (Booth 1524) has implemented PseudoWire Emulation End-to-End (PWE3) in its G6 Universal Media Gateway, allowing service providers to migrate legacy services to new video and data packet networks, such as IPTV, FTTN and GPON.

Service providers have been faced with the expensive prospect of maintaining two access networks: one legacy network that includes TDM access plant such as DLCs, T1s and PRIs, and the new access network for video and data services. Until now, the only option for converging the legacy access network onto the new video and data network has been to packetize the voice traffic by converting it to VoIP.

PWE3 provides another access packetization option for carriers that has inherent advantages over VoIP. In order for voice packetization to occur as VoIP, integrated access devices at the customer premises or FTTN line cards have been required, creating an expensive and maintenance-intensive voice network. In addition, VoIP presumes softswitch call control, causing customer disruption and increased marketing and acquisition costs as customers are moved to the new service.

General Bandwidth resolves these issues by allowing PWE3 to be implemented in the IP TV/FTTN and GPON networks. PWE3 is an emerging standard supported by the Metro Ethernet Forum, IETF and others that enables legacy service transport over Ethernet, IP and MPLS networks, including support for both TDM-based voice and point-to-point data services. The NEBS3-certified, carrierclass G6 platform becomes the aggregation point for these services in the central office, wireless MSC or headend.

The G6 platform allows selective termination of these TDM services into routers, Class 5 switches and even conversion to VoIP for softswitch control.