According to the ISC, softswitch network architecture elements include call agent, media gateway, signaling gateway, feature server, application server, media server and management, provisioning and billing interfaces.

The Group will promote the benefits of the softswitch model in the use of 2G and 3G wireless networks where softswitch components will eventually replace legacy Mobile Switching Center servers in cellular core networks, the ISC said.

"Our goal is to create an open, standards-based core wireless network so that operators can purchased best-of-class solutions," said Rich Poole, director of Wireless Business Development at AudioCodes and chairman of the Working Group.

The ISC is committed to bringing together like-minded vendors, set up trials, and work with service providers who can benefit from softswitching technologies.

The Group has been working on a while paper, "Softswitches in a Mobile Environment," that addresses such topics as the evolution of wireless networks and how softswitches can help carriers cost-effectively migrate from 2G to 3G as well as softswitch applications for 2G and 3G networks.

The Group has also begun a survey of service providers to evaluate the deployment of the softswitch architecture in wireless core networks.

MobileInfo.Com’s Comments & Advisory: Softswitch is a nice effort by the telecommunications industry to standardize on call-based enhanced functionality network, but only from the viewpoint of a voice-centric and circuit-switched telecommunications world. If we ignore inevitable convergence of voice and data, this would be a forward-looking step. Unless we start considering voice as one form of information flow (aka bits of time-sensitive information) in a VoIP world managed by IP version 6, there will be a gap between the two architectures. Softswitch organization is using same terms and same computer concepts that we have in the digital information-driven world – application servers and media servers but these terms mean different things to IT and telecommunications professionals. We would like Softswitch to consider this sub-architecture as a transitional step leading to a much broader information architecture where we deal with a digital world, where information is of many different types, where there is seamless integration between voice and data applications, where wireline Internet and wireless Internet are parts of a composite IP-based network and where devices are not just handsets or call directors but handheld devices, smart phones, desktops, and embedded devices. May be, what we are talking about is just a wishful architectural concept but all large buildings start taking shape in an architect’s office and not on an engineer’s drawing board.