Samsung is retooling its CDMA core network infrastructure in hopes of penetrating the U.S. market with a next-generation platform. The South Korean vendor is releasing a wireless softswitch and media gateway designed to integrate with new IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) architectures.

The new products will be available by the end of the first quarter of 2006, adding to Samsung’s growing technology portfolio targeted at U.S. carriers. The North American CDMA infrastructure market is dominated by Lucent Technologies and Nortel Networks, and their reign shows no sign of ending. Earlier this year, with only one contract with a Tier II vendor to its name, Ericsson closed shop in San Diego where it had taken over Qualcomm’s old CDMA business and moved what remained of its CDMA efforts to China.

But that hasn’t stopped other vendors from trying to make in-roads in the crowded market. Asian vendors like Samsung, UTStarcom, Huawei and ZTE have all introduced new CDMA radio access and core products in the U.S. over the last year, though none has yet to gain traction. In March, Samsung introduced three new base stations in the North America to complement its standard macro cell platform. The new pico-cell, micro cell and low-power compact base stations represented a strategic shift for Samsung away from the major urban deployments to more infill and suburban markets.

The launch of a new softswitch technology may be another entry point for Samsung, since the migration from legacy MSC cores to next-generation architectures is expected to be a disruptive event, allowing new vendors like Samsung an opening. On the GSM side, Alcatel has already made significant gains into both T-Mobile and Cingular’s network core with its Spatial Wireless MSC Server platform.