Research Of Soft Switch Technology Developmental For China Unicom Group

Soft Switch Network (SSN, referred as hereinafter), which matters a lot for the whole architecture of future communication information networks, is the developmental focus in the global communication industry in recent years. It's a common problem faced by all operators as how to improve the utilization efficiency of network resources through new technology and how to develop rapidly new services, meanwhile reducing network construction cost and operation cost in this very moment of undergoing big adjustments in the communication industry. Since main revenue from network source is not in line with operator's investment focus, operators worry about whether the investment in networks could get repaid and fear the possible losing of their users for not-updated technology. Both traditional telecom networks and internet are challenged by those threats. To cope with this situation, all operators gradually focus on the development of NGN. The development of NGN has been always a big concern for China Unicom Group (CU hereinafter referred as). Actively observing the trend of NGN, CU has already deployed NGN commercial trial networks in provinces and cities. In today's situation, to further define the developmental direction of NGN and to make developing strategies are of crucial for telecom operators. Under this circumstance, the author tries to define soft switch technology developmental target and recent technology developing strategies for CU by analyzing today's soft switch situation, and for the final purpose, to provide some reference for the future development of soft switch for CU.This paper is written combined with the author's project experience in CU. As the key participator, the author did projects:CU Technology Strategy, Long-distance Soft Switch Commercial Trial Network of CU, Design and Test of Construction Plan for Local Commercial Trial Network. Based on these work experience, the paper makes the analysis of soft switch technology theory and studies its present developmental situation. Then this paper elaborates the importance of developing soft switch technology taking CU's present network condition into consideration. By conducting the comparison analysis among various technologies and methods that CU can adopt in introducing SSN, the author suggests the way to deploy soft switch technology in CU's fixed network, and makes different developing strategies in the North and in the South China. A development plan for the short and the long-term is also drawn by the author and finally, the author analyzes the trend of merge for fixed and mobile networks of soft switch looking to the future.