Tekelec Unveils Vision for the New Diameter Network

Showcases Framework to Profit from Mobile Data and Manage Signaling Growth

BARCELONA, Spain — Mobile World Congress Hall 1 Stand 1F44 — February 27, 2012 — Tekelec, the mobile broadband solutions company, is introducing its vision for a New Diameter Network, a foundation for a successful mobile data business. The New Diameter Network is comprised of control elements – policy servers, charging systems, subscriber databases, gateways, and session and mobility management equipment – that rely on the Diameter protocol to exchange network, subscriber, policy, and charging information.

Mobile operators face a dual threat to network performance, customer loyalty and profitability models. The first is the well-documented growth in the volume of mobile data traffic. The second is equally critical: a ‘signaling storm’ caused by the cumulative impact of connected device and application growth, personalized service plans, and an increasingly mobile subscriber base. For example, tiered service plans generate Diameter signaling between policy servers, charging systems and subscriber databases to track usage. More sophisticated services, like personal ads, or shared data plans which track usage across multiple users and devices, further increase signaling traffic. Other sources of Diameter signaling include LTE subscriber authentication, LTE roaming, and subscribers who move between LTE and 3G or Wi-Fi networks.

The New Diameter Network provides a framework for managing this signaling storm and profiting from mobile data. Unlike outdated Diameter solutions, such as load balancers and protocol converters that offer point-to-point transport of Diameter signaling traffic, the New Diameter Network offers the scalability, reliability, and flexibility required in evolving networks.

Tekelec provides the three most critical components of the New Diameter Network:

• The Diameter Signaling Router (DSR) acts as the central nervous system, relaying messages with all Diameter-based network elements in 3G, IMS and LTE networks. The DSR establishes a connection with each endpoint, relieving them of routing, traffic management and load balancing tasks. This approach shifts intelligence from the network edge to the Diameter core, improving network performance, reducing complexity, lowering costs, and enabling new services.

• The Policy Server (PCRF) sets real-time business rules for managing network resources, prioritizing subscribers, applications and devices, and defining innovative services.

• The User Data Repository (UDR) personalizes these rules with subscriber profile, state and usage data. The UDR is the central, real-time repository for front-end databases, such as Home Subscriber Servers (HSSs) and subscriber profile repositories (SPRs), storing location, authentication, preference, service, identity and presence data in one logical system.

Tekelec’s EAGLE XG middleware platform is the engine of the New Diameter Network, providing three essential layers of scalability:

• High message processing rates to handle spikes in signaling and data traffic;

• Databases that scale to manage the immense volume of real-time subscriber and device data; and

• Diameter applications and use cases that can scale independently.

In addition, the platform provides critical requirements such as geo-redundancy, congestion controls and overload protection to safeguard the network.

“Forward-looking service providers understand that dedicated Diameter signaling systems will be a key element to managing and scaling all-IP networks,” said Brian Partridge, vice president of Yankee Group’s Network Research. “Deploying infrastructure to support a dedicated Diameter control plane puts service providers in the best long-run position to monetize network resources and subscriber profile data. Vendors that can deliver a broad Diameter control plane solution will see increasing demand as LTE network roll-outs ramp up worldwide.”

“One hundred percent of operators’ revenue-generating mobile data services will run on the New Diameter Network,” said Doug Suriano, Tekelec’s chief technology officer. “The solution to sustaining revenue, data and signaling traffic growth is architecting Diameter networks from the outset with the scalability, reliability, and flexibility required to meet demanding network requirements.”

Infonetics Research recently named Tekelec as the “front runner” in the Diameter signaling control market. The company also announced today that it has won 13 DSR systems across nine service providers.

James Beattie, Consultant, Babel PR

+44 207 434 5550 | james@babelpr.com