Updated Support Services

by Alan Percy, CMO @TelcoBridges

Since the founding of TelcoBridges in 2002, a priority has always been to make sure customers get the support services needed to be successful.   This theme lives on today and is one of the key competitive differentiators for TelcoBridges.  We frequently hear wonderful compliments about TelcoBridges support and the people that deliver the support.

Support Graphic

As TelcoBridges product portfolio has expanded and the business has grown, the support service offerings must also adapt.   In the last few years, TelcoBridges has invested in new support staff and infrastructure, including:

    • Addition of a support staff covering EMEA based in Turkey
    • Additional support for the APAC region based in Bangladesh
    • Reworked support lab with remote access
    • Enhanced trouble ticket tracking and resolution prioritization tools

Meanwhile, the company had not adjusted the pricing for hourly support services in nearly 10 years.

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Welcome Sandro Peri to the TelcoBridges Team!

Welcome Sandro Peri to TelcoBridgesWe are thrilled to share news of a new hire here at TelcoBridges, bringing on Sandro Peri as our new Sales Manager for EMEA.  Sandro comes to us with extensive experience in the telecommunications industry and technical sales, having held sales positions at a number of telecom equipment makers.    In addition to his technology sales experience, Sandro also brings a strong background in channel and partner management, helping reseller partners grow their business with hardware and software solutions.

“This is an exciting opportunity and am looking forward to being part of the TelcoBridges team”, said Sandro Peri

Based in Northern Italy, Sandro will be covering TelcoBridges sales responsibilities for the EMEA territory, with a few exceptions (most French-speaking countries will still be covered from Montreal).

Sandro has a unique family background, with half of Italian heritage, and the other half from America.   Sandro loves traveling, winter sports and cooking.

The TelcoBridges product portfolio Sandro will be representing includes:

  • ProSBC & FreeSBC – wildly popular virtualized Session Border Controller (SBC) software, protecting networks from attack while offering extensive SIP interoperability and routing features with outstanding session handling performance.  With over 14 million sessions now in production or trials, ProSBC and FreeSBC are deployed in over 100 countries.
  • Tmedia VoIP Media Gateways – the industry’s most reliable & stable media gateways, boasting over five nines (99.999%) availability, with scaling from a few E1s up to 16 OC3/STM1 in a single cluster.
  • Ttrans Transcoding Gateways – with hardware accelerated transcoding delivering stable, reliable and predictable transcoding of a wide range of voice codecs.
  • Tsig Signaling Gateways – the most reliable & stable Signaling/SIGTRAN Gateway in the world.
  • And other related products from TelcoBridges.

Join us in welcoming Sandro to the TelcoBridges team with a brief note to Sandro.peri@telcobridges.com !

Network Transformation – Five Key Considerations

By Alan Percy, CMO @TelcoBridges

As service providers begin planning their transition from aging and often end-of-life network equipment, there are many considerations that must be included in the decision process.  After many discussions with service providers in transition, we have distilled their thoughts down to five key considerations that should be raised when making vendor selections:

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Cloud Communications Infrastructure – the Right Business Model

by Alan Percy, CMO @TelcoBridges

The traditional model used to sell telecommunications infrastructure required a significant up-front capital expenditure (CAPEX) with life-long software and hardware maintenance expenses.  This is a real challenge for the emerging cloud communications service providers, many of which are starting from scratch.

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NEW: Solution Brief – TDM to IP Network Transformation with netsapiens

TB Solution Brief Banner

TDM to IP Network Transformation
with netsapiens softswitch

Background

There are thousands of central offices serving small and rural communities around the globe that are still dependent on aging TDM central office switches.  These older switches are expensive to operate, difficult to maintain and many are reaching their product “end-of-life”. At the same time, many of these same service providers are looking to offer new high-value IP delivered services.

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Out-of-Band SHAKEN – Solving the adoption issues of STIR/SHAKEN

By Alan Percy, CMO @TelcoBridges

According to Metcalfe’s Law, “the effect of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the connected users”.   As service providers begin deploying STIR/SHAKEN, you can directly apply the law in determining the impact or effectiveness of protecting the integrity of the caller identity.  Without wide adoption, STIR/SHAKEN will have little value.

In the last few year there has been much progress on the legislative effort to mandate the implementation of STIR/SHAKEN, but the reality of doing so is much different.

Last month, we hosted a discussion with Jim Dalton from TransNexus on the challenges that smaller and mixed SIP/TDM service providers are having with STIR/SHAKEN Challengesimplementation of STIR/SHAKEN.  His first-hand experiences with service providers include:

  • The cost of upgrading their software and equipment to generate and verify SHAKEN identity tokens.
  • Tokens are blocked by softswitches or SBCs within the service provider network
  • Tokens that are lost in transport (on both SIP and TDM interconnects)
  • SIP over UDP packets become so large that they are fragmented
  • The destination softswitch or SBCs strip the SHAKEN identity tokens
  • Many rural and smaller service providers depend on TDM interconnects, unable to relay identity tokens

The result of any of the above is the same – an inability to pass or validate SHAKEN identity tokens, the service provider and all their subscribers are not part of the “square of the connected users”.   This means their subscriber’s calls may be blocked or ignored, and without callerID verification, makes them easy targets for spoofers and fraudsters.

So how do smaller and rural service providers participate in the STIR/SHAKEN solution?

Jim and his team have been working with the ATIS and others to devise an out-of-OOB SHAKEN Graphicband mechanism to deliver SHAKEN tokens via the Internet.   A seemingly simple solution to a complex problem, Out-of-Band SHAKEN uses HTTPS to deliver the identity token from the originating service provider’s Authentication Service (AS) to the terminating service provider’s Verification Service (VS).

Not only does this mechanism solve the issues with SIP softswitches, it also enables STIR/SHAKEN on TDM switches using media gateways.

There is much more detail covered in the recorded webinar in the TelcoBridges’ Video Library, along with past events on both STIR/SHAKEN and a range of other topics.

Both TelcoBridges and TransNexus have created a promotional bundle of services and software to help service providers implement Out-of-Band SHAKEN.   Request a consultation to learn how TelcoBridges and TransNexus can get your subscribers part of the “square of the connected users”.

NOW ON YOUTUBE: New Opportunities with Two Factor Authentication – A How To Webinar

Now available on YouTube, our “Build New Opportunities with 2FA – A How To” webinar where we explore Two Factor Authentication – more than just a means to confirm subscriber identities, 2FA is an opportunity for new revenue for service providers, offering it as a service to high-risk customers. Watch now here.