SAO PAULO, Feb. 18, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- An innovative project in Brazil is making Linux-based middleware for mobile telecom services as easy to create as a website. Algar Telecom is the fast growing mobile network operator (MNO) in Brazil. Many MNO's around the world are now finding themselves in direct competition with international over-the-top (OTT) service providers like Skype and Google Voice. To survive, they needed to find a way to rapidly and cheaply build out new telecom services and offerings, but the existing hardware and software offer limited extensibility for new features and similarly little flexibility for interoperability with other systems. In addition, they depend on innovation as a way to reduce the high development and deployment costs associated with traditional telecom systems.

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The solution was partnering with Telestax, an Austin, TX-based development firm, to build mission critical applications and services based on Mobicents JSLEE, jSS7 1.2, SMSC Gateway 1.1 and other components of the leading open source telecom middleware platforms. For example, the combined team created and deployed an interactive voice response service capable of handling 120,000 calls per day. Next, they built a messaging service delivering over 500,000 SMS messages daily to Algar's 800,000 subscribers. Additionally, this allowed both companies to take advantage of their combined engineering talent pools instead of relying on external vendors and consultants to build and maintain new solutions. Algar was able to reduce its licensing and maintenance fees by more than half and shortened their new service deployment cycle from 6-9 months down to 3-4 months.

Normandes Moreira Jr., director of solutions deployment at Algar Telecom, summed up the significance of the partnership with characteristic understatement. "We are happy to collaborate with Telestax on deploying a number of mission critical services based on Mobicents," he said. "The platform is reliable and significantly speeds up product creation." He went on to spell out their plans for the immediate future: "Our mission is to remove complexity from the traditional telecom infrastructure and in the process create a new market for innovative communications services built by mainstream developers at a cost and time comparable to building web services."

The success of the partnership has prompted further commitment from top-level management of Algar Telecom. The company is designating key engineers to contribute code to the Mobicents JSLEE, SS7 and SMSC projects. As a result, Moreira Jr. was named project lead to Mobicents EIR - a new project which aims to prevent fraudulent access to mobile devices. Mobile device fraud has been a growing concern in the 6+ billion device global market. Brazil is one of many countries that have begun to introduce legislature mandating the use of EIR systems.

For more information on Algar Telecom and the joint innovation project, contact Normandes Moreira Jr. at (34) 9664 8900 or normandes at algartelecom dot com dot br

For details on Telestax and their contributions, contact Amit Bhayani, general manager for Latin America, at amit.bhayani at telestax dot com

SOURCE Telestax