3 Softswitch Replacement Solutions: The Future of Voice

Many telecom networks have invested a majority of revenue in their switch, but they’re weighed down by outdated networks, complex infrastructures, and rising maintenance costs. So how do they go about softswitch replacement? If you are planning to do it on your own, it’s not as simple as it sounds.

If this sounds like your situation, it’s time to consider a softswitch replacement. So, what are your options?

Many obsolete switches still support significant revenue streams for voice — which is risky for providers. As systems reach end of life and failure rates increase, the cost per subscriber will rise due to fixed operational costs and legacy voice customer turnover. Service providers using outdated equipment risk service disruptions and declining sales due to:

Network functions virtualization (NFV) layers software onto existing legacy systems. Although this offers some short-term user benefits, service providers still face scalability issues and the burden of manual maintenance updates. In the long term, NFV solutions are expensive, complex, and can’t keep pace with industry changes.

Unlike conventional wholesale VoIP solutions, carrier grade cloud platforms offer customizable, turnkey solutions leverage next-gen technology to bring all the benefits of the cloud — web scalability, unrivaled service agility, and healthy, sustainable margins — to your network. They are suitable for a virtually any provider in including cable, ISP, MSP, satellite, fiber, and more.

Before you decide how to go about softswitch replacement, ask yourself it’s worth spending the money to replace your media gateway hardware only to have to do it again in another five to seven years. If you’re looking for a future-proof solution that will grow with the industry, so you never have to do this again, leverage the cloud.

Alianza understands that transitioning from a TDM solution to the cloud can seem cumbersome, but it doesn’t have to be. By partnering with Alianza — who has successfully migrated providers from virtually every switching platform on the planet — you bring on an expert who knows to mitigate risk and move subscribers over safely and efficiently. We’ve migrated hundreds of thousands of subscribers for our customers to our cloud communications platform, including bulk migrations as large as 10,000 subscribers in a single day. 

We help service providers navigate the entire migration process and are with them shoulder to shoulder (with proper social distancing, of course) to deliver a safe migration.

Within their incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC), Horizon owned their switch infrastructure and utilized a VoIP partner for connectivity outside their footprint.

With several infrastructure components already in place, including a softswitch, Horizon needed to make several largescale decisions, with time and cost being their top concerns. Horizon wanted to avoid a large upfront capital expenditure, which is typically required to expand footprint connectivity and couldn’t afford to wait several years for the development of a replacement solution.

Craig Drinkhall, Director of Products and Sales Engineering of Horizon Connects, commented, “we could not afford to wait a year and a half building and bringing a new product to market, or spend millions of dollars building out a large switch infrastructure with interconnects to all the ILECs within our footprint.” He considered his extensive experience implementing Metaswitch and BroadSoft switches at three different companies, which had “required significant upfront capital and time to implement a georedundent, carrier-grade system.”

Horizon required a solution that would help them overcome the following challenges:

• Metaswitch Replacement. The Metaswitch softswitch in place in Horizon’s ILEC was used for trunking and was operational for 10 years. During that time, the ease of implementation and number of lines deployed was less successful than Horizon desired.
• Insufficient Network Coverage. The VoIP partner didn’t cover Horizon’s current network and had no plans to expand, constraining Horizon’s ability meet their growth and revenue potential across their entire footprint.
• Limited Features. The VoIP service had basic features that “didn’t have anything feature-wise close to what we needed.”

Despite initial hesitancy from Horizon’s telecom veterans and concerns about customer resistance transitioning away from Cisco , internal testing proved Alianza’s platform and team of experts was the clear choice.

Alianza’s SIP Trunking replaced Horizon’s Metaswitch softswitch, and Business Cloud Communication provided Horizon’s customers a feature-rich, voice and unified communication (UC) solution for business users with access features like auto-attendants, custom schedules, ring groups, voicemail-to-email, mobile applications, and more.

Reduced OPEX

By migrating away from a legacy softswitch, Horizon removed several layers of OPEX, including engineers, administration, support personnel, and maintenance costs for the software.

Expedited Internal Rate of Return (IRR)

“By going with Alianza we hardly had any fixed cost structure to have to account for in calculating our internal rate of return.” Which allowed Horizon to rapidly take the new solutions to market and achieve profitability.

New Revenue Streams

Horizon leveraged BCC into multiple tiered customer offerings, creating new highly lucrative revenues streams that Horizon can offer to all customer segments true anywhere connectivity — even outside their footprint.

Increased Margins

Seats for both SIP Trunking and BCC can scale up and down to meet customer needs, resulting in monthly costs are in sync with Horizon’s growth and margins.

Our business philosophy is fundamentally different than your old switch vendor. Our cloud communications platform is free from costly mandatory maintenance contracts, security enhancements, and more, saving you tens of thousands in the long-term.

Our Platform

Our cloud communications platform enables service providers to leverage their local presence and broadband assets to deliver a more secure, higher quality, lower cost, and more profitable solution than OTT competitors.

Our Products

While it is actually necessary to replace your ageing technology, service providers can switch to the cloud without sacrificing reliability, quality, or functionalities. Our products are purpose-built to allow service providers to innovate quickly and address the evolving demands of their end user customers in a way that is easy to manage, easy to consume, and highly profitable.

Our Company