Mobile World Congress 2009

Acme Packet Evolves SBC to Meet Needs of 3G/4G Mobile Broadband

| Feb 11, 2009 | IP Services Infrastructure | Show Update

| Analyst: Joe McGarvey

Current Perspective: Positive Vendor Importance: Moderate/High Market Impact: Moderate

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Event Summary

February 10, 2009 – Acme Packet announces that it is enabling new interactive communications and entertainment services for mobile broadband networks with support for the Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) proxy capabilities and compatibility with the Rich Communications Suite (RCS) initiative. In a separate announcement, the company has defined the role of its Net-Net product family within 3GPP’s Release 8 architecture, which incorporates the IMS, Long Term Evolution (LTE) and Service Architecture Evolution architectures.

Analytical Summary

• Current Perspective: Positive on Acme Packet’s adding capabilities to its family of session management equipment and meeting compliance with evolving standards and initiatives, as these actions and product alterations better position the company’s session border controllers (SBC) to play a prominent role in the delivery of IP-based voice and data services over 3G, and eventually 4G, mobile networks. Acme Packet’s added support for RTSP proxy capabilities, compatibility with the RCS initiative and compliance with session management-related functions in Release 8 of the 3GPP IMS specification significantly increase the utility of the Acme Packet Net-Net product family in the access portion of current and future mobile networks. At the same time, many of the additions to Acme Packet’s SBCs are not voice related, taking the company out of its traditional field of expertise.

• Vendor Importance: Moderate to high to Acme Packet, as the company has achieved significant saturation of its potential customer based of fixed carriers and needs to continue to modify and adapt its product portfolio to play an increasingly significant role in mobile broadband networks to expand its overall customer base. As data traffic continues to generate an increasing percentage of the overall revenue for mobile operators and these same operators prepare to install a fourth generation of radio access network (RAN) equipment that will create a flat IP infrastructure for data and voice, additional demand will be generated for IP-based session management equipment, such as Acme Packet’s Net-Net portfolio. Acme Packet’s recent product improvements and standards compliance will enable the company to meet these future demands.

• Market Impact: Moderate on the overall session management and SBC segment of the market, as Acme Packet is the clear leader among standalone makers of SBCs. Competitors, as is most often the case, will find themselves in a position to react to Acme Packet by announcing support for the RCS initiative and compliance with Release 8 functional requirements for session management.

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