New industry paradigms usually don’t arrive ready to go in a neat, little box. They evolve. Pieces get added, names change, functions expand and, before you know it, what used to feel like a tangled drawer of cables is suddenly a streamlined toolkit. That’s what we set out to do with our recently announced Intelligent Communications Fabric. We didn’t want to completely reinvent the wheel, instead we want to deliver a new path for innovation so that communications service providers (CSPs) can reclaim their right to win and stake their place in the AI economy.
Now, it’s time to pop the hood and look at the three layers of the Intelligent Communications Fabric, and how Alianza’s solutions bring it all to life.
The Infrastructure Layer – The Foundation
The infrastructure layer is the bedrock of the Intelligent Communications Fabric. This is where the telecommunications core lives, whether it’s fixed line or mobile, IMS, VoIP or legacy. Alianza has three product families in the infrastructure layer that service providers rely on to deliver reliable communications services around the world.
Alianza Core delivers traditional telecom-grade network functions that the CSP deploys, owns and operates. The portfolio includes MetaSphere CFS/EAS, Perimeta SBC, Rhino TAS, Clearwater Core IMS, and supporting tools like MetaView and Service IQ. It also supports a wide range of deployment models, including hardware, VNF and CNF, in CSP datacenters or public cloud. Renowned for their unmatched reliability, scalability, and breadth of capabilities, providers rely on these solutions for all their voice and unified communications needs.
Alianza Fusion enables operators to leverage the capability and functionality of the Alianza Core portfolio without the burden of purchasing, deploying, integrating, and managing platforms. With Fusion, the Core system is delivered as a fully hosted and managed cloud-based service, giving the operators the ability to deliver the entire portfolio of business and residential telephony services without the operational overhead
Alianza One is a full-stack, cloud-native communications platform purpose-built to help CSPs simplify operations, reduce costs, and deliver a full suite of modern voice and collaboration services. Delivered entirely as a complete end-to-end platform, this fully managed solution allows CSPs to shift their focus from deploying and managing infrastructure to delivering innovative new services and engaging customers.
The Orchestration Layer – The Control Plane
The orchestration layer is what enables the integration between experience, infrastructure and AI to remove friction, unlock monetization, and accelerate innovation. Its key functions include:
- Media & signaling interworking
- These functions translate SIP and RTP into modern, developer-friendly APIs and codecs that applications can work with directly without having to understand all the complexity of the underlying telco protocols.
- Data
- There are a myriad of data elements in the infrastructure layer that need to be exposed to the experience layer. This could be user behavior data, conversational metadata contained within a vCON, feature utilization, or quality scores. The data function will provide pathways for data to flow between and out of the experience and infrastructure layers.
- Provisioning
- This function will automate end-to-end workflows for discovering, quoting, ordering, activation, usage, billing, and support, across Core, Fusion and One. Common and consistent APIs and portals for OSS/BSS integration will accelerate time-to-market.
- Observability
- This function will provide tools for real-time visibility into the network, correlate telemetry for root-cause analysis, and optimize service quality with actionable insights. This is where AIOps capabilities will plug into the infrastructure layer.
- Security
- Security services deliver robust AAA, encryption, policy enforcement, rate limiting, and audit trails to protect network integrity and customer trust.
The Experience Layer – Realized Value
The experience layer is where the action happens. It enables CSPs to deliver unified communications, contact center, and consumer voice services, but also to move into AI-driven opportunities such as transcription, conversational agents, real-time analytics, and partner-developed applications. By exposing APIs and data in a way that developers can easily consume, the Intelligent Communications Fabric shifts CSPs from being connectivity providers to active participants in the AI economy.
With the Intelligent Communications Fabric, CSPs have more than a modernized toolkit – they have a structured, flexible platform that turns infrastructure, orchestration, and experiences into a unified path to innovation and monetization. It’s not just about what networks can do today but positioning CSPs to actively shape the future of telecommunications.
Now that the architecture has been laid out, it’s time to see how CSPs can use it to create tangible value and stake their place in the evolving communications ecosystem.
If you want to dig in more, Telecoms Analyst Dean Bubley provides an in depth overview of the fabric in his recent post.
