Fixed Mobile Convergence

LGS, a subsidiary of Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert) serving the U.S. government community, and REDCOM Laboratories Inc., a provider of digital and IP-enabled telecommunications systems, announced that they are developing a solution that will deliver end-to-end secure communications on the move.

These capabilities support major U.S. Government initiatives for deployable, secure communications that leverage the capabilities and interoperability of commercial cellular and Voice over IP (VoIP) technologies.

Technology by LGS and REDCOM (News - Alert) provides military customers with rapidly deployable command and control communications systems for supporting both voice and data requirements at security levels up to Department of Defense (DoD) Type-1. These solutions sets have already been demonstrated to a number of DoD customers and will be a part of the upcoming Joint Users Interoperability Communications Exercise (JUICE) starting June 1-19.

“Working with REDCOM’s JITC-certified products, LGS is able to leverage its strong experience in providing mobile wireless communications equipment and add to that a level of secure encryption that makes this solution set particularly attractive for tactical and battlefield usage,” stated Ron Iverson, CEO, LGS.

LGS, headquartered in Vienna, Va., will be created by joining employees from Lucent's Government Solutions business unit, Alcatel Government Solutions, Inc., and Lucent's Bell Labs Government Communications Lab. LGS will become the sole sales and contracting channel for all classified and unclassified business contracted from U.S. federal agencies and departments, both military and civilian.

The joint solution combines the LGS Tactical Base Station Router (TacBSR) multi-band GSM cellular system and the REDCOM SLICE 2100 voice switching system, powered by REDCOM’s TRANSip technology suite for seamless integrated VoIP and TDM interoperability in a single platform.

The joint solution allows implementation of ITU Standard V.150.1, for implementing modem-over-IP networks. This allows government customers to place Type-1 secure calls on cell phones and PDAs registered with the LGS TacBSR, traverse any commodity IP network and terminate the call on a PSN- or DSN-based secure telephone (STE) via the V.150.1 gateway functionality on the REDCOM SLICE 2100. Another innovation is the ability to provide priority and preemption features for high-priority users, end-to-end, via LGS and REDCOM’s implementation of a key DoD feature, MLPP, Multi-Level Precedence and Preemption, for the most important calls to get through during crisis situations.

“By combining the LGS TacBSR with REDCOM’s SLICE 2100, we can truly deliver to the soldier a converged communications solution set,” commented Klaus Gueldenpfennig, president, REDCOM, in a release.

“This solution set is reliable and is standards-based. Soldiers can now have secure, end-to-end, wired-to-wireless communications and have secure interoperability with U.S. Joint Forces fielded TDM and VoIP technologies,” he added.

The LGS TacBSR provides a single box GSM cellular solution with cellular network functions in the smallest form factor. It leverages VoIP (SIP 2.0) for backhaul and to inter-network multiple TacBSRs in easy to deploy and manage, flat architecture employing commodity IP networks to interconnect providing “cellular-over-IP” functionality.

When combined with a V.150.1-capable gateway, the TacBSR can provide connectivity to VoIP, PSN, and DSN networks for standard GSM handsets and PDAs and also for Type-1 encrypted GSM handsets and Smartphones like those being developed under the National Security Agency’s (News - Alert) Secure Mobile Environment Portable Electronic Device (SME PED) program.

SLICE 2100 with TRANSip is a Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) integrated communications platform that provides a flexible, reliable VoIP solution. It offers complete TDM to IP transformation in a single, compact platform.

The company claims it is easily transportable for tactical communications, powerful enough for strategic applications, and supports V.150.1 that enables interoperability of SCIP devices through SLICE 2100.