BOSTON—Nortel, which claims about two-thirds of the rural switching market, is putting in place plans that will allow rural telcos to migrate their existing DMS switches to true voice-over-IP environment.

In September, the company will make its 600 Series of Generics generally available for its DMS switch. In the first part of a multi-step process, Nortel will offer a software suite that will give rural carriers the ability to offer voice over broadband, said Dennis Couture, Director of Rural Markets for Nortel.

“What we’re really looking at here is the giving rural telcos the ability to offer a SIP-controlled residential service,” he said, during the OPASTCO show here this week. “It’s a great way to go CLECing in other territories.”

From a hardware evolution standpoint, the company plans to add a single-rack mounted Packet Gateway Interface along with an Ethernet switch, which will interface with the DMS 10’s 3T98 system processor. Further down the road, Nortel also will have an H.248 interface for the DMS 10.

“At that point, the DMS-10 has evolved into a fully featured softswitch,” Couture said.

One of the issues the vendor is facing is trying to make the migration to VoIP economically appealing to rural carriers. In many cases, that will mean initially offering the service through a CLEC arm and then slowly brining on existing ILEC customers onto the same infrastructure.

“The nice part about this approach is that you don’t have to rip out existing infrastructure,” Couture said. “It’s really a smooth migration.”