Texas Instruments announced today that its PIQUA IP quality management software, which is already embedded in customer premises equipment, has been extended for installation in media gateways on carrier networks.

PIQUA manages quality and performance of VoIP and other IP-based applications using standard RTCP-XR and TI-developed extensions. The company also plans to incorporate RTCP-HR and RTCP-Video for future IP applications. These standards allow the delivery of quality metrics to a network management and quality assurance system, and PIQUA extends the parameters available in these reports with custom features such as its Echo Quality Index, providing enhanced statistics and diagnostic capabilities, according to a statement from TI.

“There are a lot of question how about how you offer VoIP QoS and what happens when there is no ‘five nines’ guarantee,” said John Smrstik, DSP marketing manager at TI. “With PIQUA, we’re looking across the network and not just at the end point. This is a carrier-class announcement.” Though TI is fundamentally a semiconductor company, Smrstik said, “So much of what makes for a quality IP communications experience happens at the chip level, so we can help.”

"As carriers prepare to deliver next-generation services, like IP multimedia subsystems (IMS) and fixed mobile convergence (FMC), they will need greater access to and better views of their networks to support and monitor the wide variety of applications delivered via broadband connections," said William Stofega, research manager with IDC's VoIP Services Program, in a statement issued by TI.

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