Pactolus Intros IMS

BOSTON -- Pactolus Communications Software Corporation, the leading developer of Class 4/5 SIP-based IP voice services, today introduced IMS compatibility for its SIPware™ services – prepaid and post paid calling, audio conferencing, voice messaging, and service integrated operator assistance - and IMS extensions to it’s widely deployed RapidFLEX™ Application Server and Service Creation Environment (SCE). Believed to be the industry’s first IMS-compliant service products, the suite was announced at the VON (Voice Over the Network Show) in Boston to allow service providers to deliver their current market-proven, revenue-generating services to new potential customers such as wireless and emerging fixed-mobile user populations, and introduce IMS-enabled innovations such as rich conferencing service features. As service providers begin to converge cellular, wireline, and VoIP networks, SIP-based voice services will become the key element in offering service bundles to subscribers that leverage any type of network access.

Matt Stein, Vice President of Services for Primus Telecommunications Canada Inc., the largest alternative provider of consumer long distance services in Canada, noted: “Primus Canada has already made a significant investment in converged network elements that support a SIP-based services architecture for its wireline focused businesses; wireless IP-based network technologies are a key part of our business expansion model. We’ve been offering prepaid and post paid calling card services using the Pactolus service delivery platform in our existing network. With the introduction of IMS interfaces for these products, Pactolus gives us clear opportunities to offer new mobile and fixed-mobile services.”

IMS was developed by the 3rd Generation Partnership Program (3GPP) to facilitate a common approach for building services in both fixed and mobile environments. It enables network operators to converge voice, video and other multimedia services to deliver innovative and compelling bundled services for consumers and businesses. Pactolus is a pioneer in developing IP-based service architectures; capabilities announced today enable its award-winning suite to fit readily into IMS-compliant networks.

IMS: Enabling Services Feature Innovation, Reducing Operating Costs Pactolus’ IMS capabilities and compliance gives service providers the power to create innovative interfaces and service features that can, for example, allow 3G handset users to initiate a conference, determine participants and selectively, privately communicate with participants using SMS for background chat. Such IMS-enabled feature innovations can support service providers in attracting and retaining subscribers, and enable incremental per-feature revenue opportunities.

Pactolus' IMS prepaid support will allow network operators to reduce operating and line costs, and broaden their service bundling flexibility by eliminating the need for expensive AIN network service elements. Not only does the implementation of SIP-based services significantly reduce capex and operational costs, it also affords service providers a new level of flexibility in developing innovative new services. And for service providers with both wireline and wireless subscribers, this approach allows service providers to offer fixed-mobile service plans with a bundle of either prepaid or post paid minutes.

Pactolus has implemented IMS across its RapidFLEX platform and SIPware Services using an open software environment that includes SIP, SOAP, XML, HTTP, RTP and other IP-based technologies in an extensible framework. IMS extensions have been added using the Pactolus RapidFLEX SDK, allowing the current software environment to embrace new protocols required for IMS support such as DIAMETER. This enables service providers to take advantage of the rich set of existing, commercially proven capabilities in any wireless network.

“We designed our service delivery platform, service creation environment and services to be a pure-IP, SIP-compliant service delivery solution right from the very beginning,” noted Dave Horton, President, CTO and founder of Pactolus. “The industry-first capabilities and feature innovation potential announced today use the IMS interfaces incorporated in our market-proven product suite, enabling network operators and service providers to use a single services framework across all types of fixed and mobile network topologies. Our goal is to help service providers support the delivery of unified services bundles that subscribers can easily learn and leverage, giving the service provider an important new edge in sustaining subscriber loyalty while expanding their addressable market,” he concluded.

Pactolus Communications Software Corp.