The Department of Technology and Information (DTI), which provides the technology infrastructure for the State of Delaware, deployed over the past year the Acme Packet Net-Net session border controllers (SBCs) to unify its disparate communications infrastructure.The DTI deployed Acme Packet Net-Net 4250 SBCs in its two data centers to provide secure termination of the Verizon Burstable Enterprise Shared Trunking (BEST) service. Through centralized SIP trunking, a hosted voicemail platform with unified messaging services eliminates the need for additional voicemail systems, maintenance and administration expenses statewide. Communications between different IP-PBXs are routed through Acme Packet's SBCs and translated to the proper protocol to complete the call. Acme Packet also provides the protocol conversion to nail the connection to one hosted voicemail platform.
Public networking infrastructures that include State and federal governments are sure to benefit by reducing hardware, disparate systems and the maintenance associated. Additionally, I expect more energy savings. Tax revenues are down, down, down and landline cuts continue to go up, up, up. According to Delaware's Governor Markell: "We face the largest budget shortfall in state history." As State and even federal governments continue to adopt the same strategies--use SBCs to glue a better network, using less gear, requiring less maintenance and support model; you can expect that the benefits of reducing costs are key because all across the country (save a few States) tax revenues are down and the bills keep coming in. Delaware understands doing more for less and they are taking advantage of Verizon's BEST service that also addresses redundancy (business continuity) and overflow routing.
What this also means is less reliance upon the PSTN because the public network serves a large government base (State, local & Federal). With the adoption by more State and federal governments of similar deployments, the landline abandonment rate will climb and hardware sales will decrease, at least for government. Why buy numerous IP-PBXs and voice mail systems?
Long ago I asked the question, "What will happen to the Central Offices (COs) and PSTN infrastructure?" When speaking with Michael Leo, Director, Enterprise and Contact Center Solutions Marketing at Acme Packet, it became clearer to me that the PSTN is definitely shrinking and will contract even more. Hardware sales will no longer be as they were--numerous PBXs and voice mail systems serving the large enterprise and government are diminishing in numbers. Voice is an application and for public and large enterprise networks this means significant change. The data center is the new CO of the future that will continue to displace the old.
