CLECs and ISPs looking for a VoIP system designed specifically for tier 2 and tier 3 carriers have an option in a company that was swallowed by Lucent but, luckily, never digested by it.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [December 10, 2004]

From boom to bust and to the much-heralded current VoIP boomlet, Nathan Franzmeier, CEO of Allen, Tex.-based Emergent Network Solutions, has been part of several companies, but has worked out of the same office. The company was acquired by Hyannis, Mass.-based Excel Switching, which in turn was acquired by Murray Hill, N.J.-based Lucent. In 2001, Lucent divested itself of Emergent and in 2002 it spun off Excel. Throughout, he never had to move.

Now, Franzmeier's back where he was a decade ago—but in a marketplace looking to his product as this year's hottest commodity, and with a resume-building several years of selling to carriers of all sizes everywhere in the world when he was part of Lucent. "I was vice president of ITSP converged services solutions," he says. He was in charge of converged services tandem switching.

Switching has changed. "I've been in this space since 1993," Franzmeier explains. "Now we can have a solution that does not require a class 5 switch, one that can reach all the way out of the core of the network to the end user. We've always been in the core, handling a large volume of calls, but now it's feasible to deliver end to end service."

However, even residential networks now have NAT and firewall, especially if they use a Wi-Fi home network. Emergent Network Solutions' products do everything, from crossing the firewall and handling NAT to billing, routing, and even the handling of calls using SIP or other protocols (with SIP the preferred protocol).

Franzmeier says his company offers the benefits of a total solution from a single vendor if your customers are small businesses (up to 100 seats per office) or residential users. SIP can be powerful. Franzmeier says his company just bid on a contract to connect 5,000 offices with about five employees per office. "They wanted hunt groups and everything and to have it all on one PBX and we can do that," he says.

The software components of the total solution is called Emergent Networks Telecommunications Infrastructure Control Environment, or ENTICE. It includes the following modules:

1. The ENTICE Call Server
2. ENTICE Connectors
3. ENTICE Device Servers (H.323 Device Server, SIP Device Server, Lucent/Excel Switch Device Server, and H.248 Device Server)
4. ENTICE OAM&P Agent
5. ENTICE Machine Manager
6. ENTICE WEB Browser Based Administration

The software runs on scalable Linux or Solaris clusters.

Franzmeier touts the fact that ISPs can buy a total solution from one company, but this is an old argument. Some say this is a good idea, while others warn that purchasers become dependent on the company they buy from unless they mix their vendors.

The system, he says, is seamlessly scalable, while competitors' entry level systems can handle 100 or 500 subscribers but eventually require a forklift upgrade. "Our normal minimum is 1,000 simultaneous callers, which can be up to 10,000 residential subscribers. The system can grow up to 50,000 simultaneous callers. We know we can scale because we're scaling down the systems we sell, not scaling them up."

Finally, Franzmeier says that the system has a programmable application interface. Programs can be written in C++ (after the programmer has gone through the company's training course, which costs several thousand dollars). "It's cheaper than VON," says Franzmeier.

CLECs, however, may be most interested in another feature. Because Emergent Network Solutions is accustomed to dealing with tier 2 and tier 3 providers, the billing system is designed to enable ISP resellers. Users log on with a user name, password, and domain, and can only view accounts within their domain.

Pricing and availability
An entry-level system including billing features starts at around $80,000. The company's ENTICE suite of products is available now.

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