System Elements 

The Broadband Services System comprises three basic elements: 

1. Broadband Class 5™ Services 
2. Powerful Personal Communications Managers™, Business Communications Managers™ and Service Provider Communications Managers™ service provisioning and control portals 
3. A comprehensive, flexible, carrier-grade softswitch

Broadband Class 5™  Services 

Broadband Class 5 services encompass both "interpretations" of popular phone services - call waiting, call forwarding, caller ID and so on - as well as other, next-generation voice and multimedia applications so that they can take full advantage of the additional capabilities inherent in "new" terminals, such as IP Phones, Palm PDAs, soft-phones, and more. 

For example, in an existing business or residence if multiple POTS phones are connected to a single line they all ring if the number is called. With Syndeo's Broadband Services System, if a number is called, not only can the subscriber set up the system so the POTS phones ring, but also so that any SIP-based IP phones and PCs running soft-phones in the building simultaneously ring/display messages and the user's cell phone, which has a different number, rings as well. The subscriber, then, can pick up any of these devices to answer the call - even the cell phone in another location - and the other phones and terminals stop ringing. Conversely, if someone calls a subscriber's cell phone, he can "answer" that phone on a POTS phone and avoid airtime charges. 

Version 1.0 of the Broadband Services System also delivers powerful network-based universal messaging services that allow subscribers full access to all voice messages, either via their touchtone phones or through their standard e-mail programs. Plug-ins for popular e-mail clients, such as Outlook, Netscape and Eudora, let users use familiar tools to access, copy, store, and forward voice messages in exactly the same way that they do for e-mail messages. The Broadband Services System takes care of network universal messaging issues, such as message replication/backup and moving the message store geographically as the subscriber roams geographically. 

Communications Manager™ Service Provisioning and Control Portals 

Syndeo's revolutionary Personal, Business, and Service Provider Communications Managers™ are web-based application portals that enable subscribers to easily control and manage all aspects of their telephony and messaging services through intuitive GUIs that run on standard web browsers. 

These Communications Managers are tightly integrated with leading PDA devices and email/contact management applications to further bring the power of existing data tools into the telephony world. 

All of these portals are designed to be customized and branded by the carrier. They also incorporate push-technology options, which provide another channel of revenue generation for the service provider. 

Finally - A Solution for Out-of-Network Service Roaming 

Since the Syndeo Communications Managers can run as persistent JAVA applets on standard laptop computers, they also provide the first mechanism for mobility of telephony services for landline service providers.

When traveling across country, for example, a subscriber of a Syndeo-powered carrier can go to a conference room, plug in his laptop to an outside line and, using the remote-control-shaped applet, assign the phone in the conference room to be his "local" phone number. From this point on, all calls to his home office will ring the conference room phone and by keeping his laptop plugged in, all his services, such as call waiting, three-way calling and caller ID will "appear" on the applet.

The World's First Broadband, Carrier-Grade Softswitch

The Syndeo Broadband Services System also includes an extremely flexible, carrier-grade, multiprotocol softswitch that provides not only call control and media gateway control of network elements in IP, ATM and TDM networks, but also allows for application mediation among incompatible softswitches from other vendors.

The Syndeo Broadband Class 5 Softswitch component of the BSS supports and interworks SIP, MGCP, H.323 and SS7 network elements. It, therefore, can appear simultaneously as:

• A call agent in an MGCP IP network
• A proxy and redirect server in a SIP network
• A gatekeeper in an H.323 network
• An SSP (signaling point) in an SS7 network

Completely fault tolerant and scalable to millions of subscribers, the Syndeo Broadband Softswitch can operate in any of four modes:

1. As the entire call control plane simultaneously controlling media gateways, access gateways, subscriber management systems, CPE devices and more,
2. Adding a "missing" capability - SS7 or H.323, for example - to another vendor's softswitch implementation,
3. Performing adaptation and mediation of services among otherwise incompatible vendor softswitches, or
4. Standby only - where this functionality is turned off completely and the other Broadband Class 5 services run on top of another vendor's softswitch.

Again, to provide this single-source, consistent services plane across an entire network, the Broadband Services System also fully controls more types of devices - terminals, media gateways, access gateways, softswitches and CPE equipment, such as IADs, DSL modems, etc. - than any other solution on the market. 

Reliability and Scalability - the Keys to Success

Since the BSS is designed to "replace" primary phone line services, it delivers these new-generation capabilities with 99.999% reliability. The BSS is implemented on industry-standard, NEBS-compliant computing platforms using a familiar ATM Dual-Star configuration and an industry-standard, 1G-byte/sec., low-latency bus for replication services.

This unique architecture allows the Syndeo Broadband Services System to maintain all stable calls upon processor failure. For a catastrophic node failure caused by, say, an earthquake, services are transferred to a backup BSS node in less than one second.