VeriSign Inc. Monday moved to stitch together two acquisitions as part of a push to gain ground in the telecom
space with new signaling and billing technology intended to make it a core utility for carriers.
VeriSign unveiled its plans for Illuminet, acquired last
September, and H.O. Systems, acquired in January, at the
Supercomm show in Atlanta.
Under the firm’s new strategy, it will weld together Illuminet and H.O. Systems as the VeriSign Telecommunications Services Group.
Through the acquisition of Illuminet, VeriSign picked up an SS7 network
of signaling networks for nearly the entire U.S. public-switched telecommunications infrastructure. At the time of the acquisition,
VeriSign said it expected to use its own portfolio of technology to offer new services to Illuminet’s customers, including secure
short messaging, local number portability, and Voice Over IP (VoIP) bridging.
H.O. Systems, on the other hand, brought VeriSign billing and customer care solutions for wireless carriers. It picked up the
company with the intention of expanding the Illuminet portfolio of services with end-to-end billing and CRM applications for
wireless carriers.
The new Telecommunications Services Group is geared toward making those intentions a reality, aided by a new IP platform for telecom
database services dubbed the Advanced Transaction Look-up and Signaling system (ATLAS).
VeriSign said ATLAS can seamlessly interact with multiple protocols — including DNS
giving it the potential to serve as a database platform for Local Number Portability, Calling Name, LIDB, and other database
look-ups. The company said that by bridging these protocols, users will eventually be able to communicate and transact business
across different kinds of networks using all kinds of devices, from wireline phones to mobile phones, PDAs and PCs.
“ATLAS positions VeriSign to deliver the promise of convergence by providing a scalable, reliable, and flexible platform that
bridges Internet and telephony services,” said Ari Balogh, vice president, engineering, VeriSign. “The ability to talk IP on one end
and SS7 on the other creates fast data look-ups across both worlds.”
Additionally, VeriSign said ATLAS is capable of handling more than 100 billion Internet connections per day within a fraction of a
second. It also promised that the platform can provide faster domain name resolution and updates.
On the services front, VeriSign also unveiled NetDiscovery Services, an offering aimed at carriers facing the Federal Communications
Commission’s June 30, 2002, deadline for compliance with the 1994 CALEA — Communications Assistance Law Enforcement Act — mandate.
CALEA, which recently gained momentum with the passage of the USA Patriot Act, mandates that telecom service providers support law
enforcement agencies in conducting lawfully authorized electronic surveillance of call content and call data.
After the deadline passes, carriers will face a $10,000 per day fine for each law enforcement agency intercept request that is not
fulfilled.
“In addition to sunk costs, administration is perhaps the biggest headache for carriers,” said Terry Kremian, executive vice
president of Telecommunications Services for VeriSign. “CALEA requires that carriers provision network elements for the intercept
event, intercept the call content and data, deliver it directly to one or more law enforcement monitoring facilities in a standard
format, and provide secure records storage. Depending on the city, type and number of switches involved, carrier costs for
compliance are estimated to be as much as half a million dollars per switch to upgrade, and at a minimum $150,000 annually to
implement while maintaining the credentialed staff and secure processes and facilities required to properly intercept requests under
CALEA.
Instead, NetDiscovery Services is a service bureau solution that allows carriers to fulfill their obligations under the law while
outsourcing fulfillment to VeriSign’s maximum security facilities and personnel.