Multiservice Switching Forum Liaison with ITU Accelerates Specification Adoption; New Board of Directors, Technical Chairman Elected

Business Wire, March 19, 2001

Business Editors/High Tech Writers

FREMONT, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 19, 2001

The Multiservice Switching Forum (MSF) today announced that, in the first communication between the MSF and the ITU-T, the MSF has forwarded a framework document regarding Bearer Independent Call Control (BICC) to the ITU-T that will enhance architectural and protocol consistency across multiservice networks. In addition, the MSF announced that it has elected a new Board of Directors for 2001. The Board of Directors oversees all aspects of the MSF's work, including the Forum's working groups and technical committee.

"The BICC protocol is important in a number of multiservice network deployments, including voice over ATM and wireless networks," said Roger Ward, president of MSF. "We feel that the liaison with ITU-T will lead to a more open and complete specification for the emergent BICC protocol."

The BICC document prepared by MSF's Media Control Working Group marks the first formal communication from MSF to an ITU-T group. The liaison with ITU-T is aimed at achieving greater convergence between BICC, Call Bearer Control (CBC) and H.248, in order to promote simpler and more unified multiservice network architectures.

Roger Ward, manager of future switched network technology strategy at BT was reelected president of the board. Also reelected to a second term as a board member was Morgan Littlewood, director of business development for Cisco Systems. Newly elected members of the board of directors of MSF include Pieter Poll, vice president of worldwide emerging technology at Qwest; Brian Down, network transformation architect at Marconi, and Chris Daniel, senior director of next generation switching and control at WorldCom.

In addition, Mark Klerer, director of solutions ready subsystems architecture at Nortel Networks was elected as chairman of the technical committee and Mark Disbrow, chief technical officer at Lucent Technologies UK, was elected technical committee vice-chairman. The Multiservice Switching Forum (MSF) Technical Committee is primarily responsible for furthering the technical efforts of the forum. Reviewing all proposals submitted by MSF's Working Groups, the Technical Committee works to produce technical documents to accelerate the deployment of MSF intra-switching system protocols and interfaces.

About the MSF

The Multiservice Switching Forum (MSF) is a global association of service providers and system suppliers committed to developing and promoting open-architecture, multiservice switching systems. Founded in 1998, the MSF is an open-membership organization comprised of the world's leading telecommunications companies. The MSF's activities include developing implementation agreements, promoting worldwide compatibility and interoperability, and encouraging input to appropriate national and international standards bodies. For more information about the MSF and its members, visit the MSF web site at http://www.msforum.org.