VeriSign has taken the edge off the perennial and proverbial thorn in the service providers’ side with its outsourced solution for complying with the costly mandates of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act.

California-based competitive local exchange carrier, Arrival, as well as two regional wireless carriers--Cellular Mobile Systems of St.Cloud and First Cellular of Southern Illinois--said last week they have deployed VeriSign’s NetDiscovery Services for providing law enforcement agencies with access for lawful intercept, a requirement many wireless operators in particular have been unable or unwilling to meet.

The network-based security solution was created by combining VeriSign’s infrastructure for trust services and security bureau personnel with the networking know-how of recently acquired Illuminet Holdings, a service bureau company best known for providing signaling and interconnection services to service providers.

“There are thousands of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in the U.S. who have the authority to do [lawful intercept.] We take away all the network operations burden that comes with having to work with every agency that comes along with a legal order,” said Raj Puri, vice president of NetDiscovery Services at VeriSign Telecommunications Services.

NetDiscovery Services provides for the provisioning of intercept events, manages call content, converts calls and call data into required formats and delivers it to various law enforcement agencies through a secure IP/VPN connection.

“Our approach is to cut the capital cost for carriers who have to make a capital investment to support law enforcement. Now, they can leverage our network infrastructure at a fraction of the cost. Their only requirement is to have a single dedicated connection with us,” Puri said.

Puri added that service providers also save on staffing requirements. “From an operational [perspective] they don’t have to have any security office personnel trained on policy and procedures, which is a big burden if you look at all the FCC rules and the number of records they have to maintain,” Puri said.

NetDiscovery also supports the growing requirements of cable operators and VoIP providers even though those requirements are still being defined. “There is a lot of debate about what is required and what isn’t in packet telephony, but our solutions will help carriers come into compliance with the basic capabilities as they work aggressively with agencies and standards bodies to determine what will be required [in the future,]” Puri said.