Siemens Takes NGE to USSiemens Takes NGE to US

BOCA RATON, Fla. -- Siemens Communications, Inc., today announced its Next Generation Exchange (NGE) offering, designed for U.S. service providers that want to deliver unified data, video and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) services without costly infrastructure changes to legacy time-division multiplexing (TDM) network environments that are growing obsolete.

"Service providers are looking for a cost-effective way to develop new revenue sources while at the same time gracefully displacing Class 5 network systems," said Joe McGarvey, a senior analyst with Current Analysis. "The NGE offering, which supports both TDM and packet voice services, is a logical first step for carriers looking to make a circuit-to-packet transition without disrupting existing service offerings."

A carrier-grade, open and standards-based architecture solution, the Siemens(R) NGE family consists of the Siemens SURPASS(R) softswitch platform, best-of-breed gateways and a comprehensive slate of integration services from Siemens. Scalable to more than 100,000 lines, the Siemens NGE portfolio provides for migration to the complete family of Siemens SURPASS IP solutions for the home and business. The NGE offering complements Siemens' family of SURPASS NGN solutions including Voice over Broadband (VoBB), Hosted Office(TM) (BC) and Voice over Cable (VoC).

"By preserving the costly access portions of legacy infrastructures, the SURPASS NGE offering enables the service provider to transition their outside plant to revenue-generating, packet-based solutions - at a comfortable pace," said Harald Braun, president of Siemens Carrier Networks, Siemens Communications, Inc. "At the same time, the solution helps drive down costs with self-provisioning and the consolidation of database and management interfaces."

Siemens AG