DENVER — NComm Inc.(Salem, N.H.) has moved up from its original base in Layer 1 software for WANs with an ISDN layer 2 and 3 suite called NComm Stacks.
It also announced Tuesday (Nov. 18) is is joining with the Dallas Semiconductor division of Maxim Integrated Products Inc. to embed the software in Dallas' T1 chips. KS Telecom (West Palm Beach, Fla.) will use the NComm stacks and Dallas chips to upgrade its PBX and key-system hardware from T1 support to full primary-rate ISDN support.
Kyle Hallifield, chief executive of KS Telecom, said the NComm relationship evolved from his company's existing use of Dallas DS21552 transceivers. Hallifield said the NComm stacks reduced the time to market for PRI support in the Atlas family of switches to one-third the anticipated development time.
John Brandte, vice president of marketing and business development, added that demand for d-channel signaling at layers 2 and 3 was the key factor in getting primary-rate ISDN code completed first. Code within NComm stacks can be ported to other chip-set architectures, though NComm's experience with the Dallas architecture permits the layer 2 Q.291 and layer 3 Q.931 channel signaling for Dallas chips to remain more mature than alternative architectures.
Brandte said NComm's layer 1 trunk management system software may remain the company's largest business for now, but physical-layer TMS customers could migrate to suites for ISDN, Sonet or ATM.
NComm will be offering stacks primary-rate ISDN code starting at $25,000 for OEM integration with hardware. The KS Atlas family with full PRI software support will begin shipping Dec. 1.
