Zarlink, Tollgrade Team Up

OTTAWA and PITTSBURGH -- Zarlink Semiconductor Inc. (TSX:ZL), a market leader in access infrastructure and residential gateway voice solutions, and Tollgrade Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: TLGD), a leading supplier of network service assurance solutions for the telecom industry, today announced the successful interoperability of a collaborative line test solution designed to help telecom carriers improve triple play service reliability while reducing operating costs. This new solution follows a previous collaboration that linked Zarlink’s SLIC-based line test LineCare™ software solution with the Tollgrade service assurance platform.

Combining the embedded signaling and measurement capabilities of Zarlink’s VoiceEdge™ VE792 Next Generation Carrier Chipset (NGCC) with the test analysis and plain-language actionable results provided by Tollgrade’s recently introduced Stratum™ service assurance platform, the joint solution will allow voice access equipment manufacturers to easily integrate a highly interoperable solution with equivalent performance to a traditional test head. This feature will be available with the first release of Stratum, which is expected to be generally available by the end of the year.

With this new line test solution, carriers will be able to routinely and remotely monitor and test access lines to detect and repair issues before a customer experiences a problem. The remote functionality serves to shorten issue response time and reduce costly truck rolls, which can result in dramatically lower customer churn rates and operating expenses.

“Carriers are demanding a new class of access equipment that provides highly flexible in-field operational testing to meet performance and cost requirements,” said Shahin Sadeghi, segment marketing manager for carrier-class voice products with Zarlink. “Our continuing collaboration with Tollgrade has resulted in a unique total system solution, combining the VE792 NGCC with Tollgrade’s Stratum service assurance platform, providing state-of-the-art line test capabilities to significantly reduce network test costs for carriers.”

Zarlink Semiconductor Inc. (NYSE/Toronto: ZL)

Tollgrade Communications Inc.