One major conversation topic here at TMC’s ITEXPO (News - Alert) West 2008 in Los Angeles has been Dialogic Corporation’s $28 million deal with its long-time rival, NMS Communications Corporation. Dialogic (News - Alert) plans to acquire the NMS Communications Platforms business, which provides enabling technology and tools for value-added services in mobile telecom. This includes the NMS Open Access family of boards and APIs including PacketMedia Host Media Processing, and the AG series, TX series, CG series, MG series as well as the Vision family of servers and gateways.

 

The transaction has been unanimously approved by NMS's board of directors and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2008 subject to the receipt of required regulatory approvals and satisfaction of customary closing conditions.

 

Dialogic was intrigued with NMS involvement with the mobile value added service market segment, particularly relating to such intriguing ideas as video mobile phone calls. Combining the Dialogic video technology with the NMS Vision product line in theory enables a quicker time to market and a more complete product offering than either of the companies could have provided on their own.

 

In the meantime, NMS Communications is not standing still. Indeed, they announced at ITEXPO West the release of new SS7 hardware and software solutions for developers building revenue-generating IP-based services such as VoIP, mobile video and voice SMS. The new NMS products – SS7 5.0 software and TX 5000E Series hardware – support the SIGTRAN and BICC protocols and the PCI Express form factor. This helps network operators migrate from legacy time division multiplexing (TDM) networks to next-generation IP networks.

 

Brough Turner (News - Alert), co-founder and general technical mastermind at NMS for many years, said, “It’s very exciting what’s happening. Mobile video in places like China is taking off, and all of that legacy circuit-switched equipment out there means that SIGTRAN is becoming very important, along with BICC and related protocols. The future will be an amalgam of past-gen and next-gen technologies. A lot of TDM will be traveling over IP.”

 

It’s still a bit early to fathom what Turner’s role may be in Dialogic’s new world order, but whatever he does, it is sure to be interesting.

 

For more, check out the Mobile Video channel on TMCnet. 

Richard Grigonis is Executive Editor of TMC’s (News - Alert) IP Communications Group. To read more of Richard’s articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Stefania Viscusi