Nortel VoIP technology upgrades continue despite hardships

This week at Supercomm, the beleaguered communications technology provider, Nortel announced an upgrade to its Communication Server 2000--launching CS2000a. The announcement involved both a hardware and a software upgrade. Nortel's new hardware offering, the 'a' in CS2000a, is the addition of the vendor's second generation carrier grade AdvancedTCA hardware platform which allows for a 70 percent reduction in footprint while increasing service providers' Busy Hour Call Attempts capacity to five million attempts. The new CVM 14 software for the CS2000 enables advanced SIP applications.

"As we continue to work with operators as they move from basic VoIP into some of the more advanced applications, the CS2000a can now enable FMC and unified communications" said Sita Lowman, Director of Core Converged Marketing for Nortel in an interview with FierceVoIP. "Some of the new features include hosted sip call centers. You can take a large enterprise or even an SMB who doesn't want to deal with the cost of call center equipment, which can get that hosted capability from a carrier." The CVM14 software also provides SIP mobile UC clients for easier end-user migration to SIP.

This push for new technology and capabilities for Nortel's customers comes at a time when Nortel's Enterprise Solutions division is about to be pulled into the Avaya fold. Launching these upgrades seems to be a good way to assure customers that their products will continue to be supported. In a previous interview, Lowman said: "Our part of the organization is still number 1 in the world, even while under Chapter 11." Although Nortel didn't have too much to add to what we already know about the proceedings in our interview, Stephen Leaden from No Jitter has an interesting article on the fate of some of these technologies [1] once Avaya's purchase is complete.

For more,
- read the release [2]
- No Jitter's article [1]

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Nortel Carrier VoIP still strong despite the company's Chapter 11 [3]
Avaya-Nortel deal hits Canadian snag [4]
Avaya fires back at Verizon over Nortel bid [5]
Verizon seeks to block Avaya's Nortel bid [6]