Reef Point Unveils Fixed-Mobile Convergence Border Architecture

(Business News & Technology News, 5 Apr 2007)

Reef Point Systems, one of the technology leaders in convergence gateway platforms and solutions for fixed-mobile convergence (FMC), unveiled the FMC Border Architecture, the telecommunications industry's first comprehensive reference architecture to enable service providers to deliver secure, quality assured multimedia services over the full range of IP-based networks.

"FMC networking for new multimedia services has the potential to transform the telecommunications business and generate billions of dollars in revenue," said Woody Ritchey, CEO, Reef Point. "To fully tap this potential, service providers will use every access network at their disposal for delivering new services to subscribers. Reef Point's FMC Border Architecture gives the industry a clear vision of how to overcome FMC's deployment challenges and guarantee the delivery of multimedia services over multiple networks securely and with the quality that customers expect."

The architecture, which gives carriers a much-needed blueprint for deploying telecommunications command and control technologies to overcome the security, quality of service (QoS) and mobility challenges of delivering multimedia services to customers over multiple access network technologies, addresses all major IP access networks:

- Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) over WiFi
- Picocell/Femtocells
- 3G Mobile (3GPP IMS)
- WiFi
- WiMAX
- DSL/FTTX
- Cable

While border control (i.e., security and quality of service policies and enforcement) for fixed-line networks (e.g., DSL and cable) for VoIP, data and multimedia services are well-established, no coherent control specification of the FMC network border has been defined until now. FMC poses great technical, CAPEX and OPEX challenges to telecommunications service providers in order to:

- Provide access from multiple networks (i.e., mobile cellular, fixed-line, and wireless) and devices to offer mobile subscribers ubiquitous services
- Enable seamless mobile roaming across access networks
- Deliver consistent QoS to meet SLAs as users roam (i.e., dynamically adjust bandwidth and media format for different network and user-device parameters)
- Ensure user, network, core and application security across all FMC network borders (i.e., adhere to network-specific industry standards to protect mobile devices and the network).

"Reef Point has created an important vision for consolidating and managing the evolving carrier access network border," said Michael Khalilian, Chairman and President of the IMS Forum. "The FMC Border Architecture offers a path to a standards-compliant way that carriers can use to guarantee delivery of wired and wireless multimedia services as they strive to eliminate the silos at their core. As such, the FMC Border Architecture complements the 3GPP IMS architecture."

FMC Border Platform
Reef Point offers a platform, the Universal Convergence Gateway (UCG), designed as the control point between service providers' core networks and subscribers' access networks for deploying the comprehensive set of FMC Border Architecture security, QoS and mobility functions. The UCG platform is purpose-built to be deployed as the network element for access border control as defined by the 3GPP, 3GPP2, ETSI and CableLabs telecommunications industry standards bodies, including the:

- Border Gateway Function (BGF) for IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS)
- Packet Data Gateway (PDG) and Packet Data Interworking Function (PDIF) for Wireless LAN Access (WiFi and WiMAX)
- Access Service Network Gateway (ASNG) for WiMAX
- Security Gateway (SeGW) for Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA)
- Security Gateway (SeGW) for Picocells and Femtocells.

"Reef Point's definition of a multimedia FMC border control architecture prefigures what the industry will need to deploy if it wants to support truly convergent multimedia and combinational services," said Jean-Charles Doineau, Service Infrastructure Practice Leader at Ovum. "Reef Point's architecture is the first comprehensive approach to the FMC issues that carriers will face, from FMC network design to security and quality of service management."

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