Sonus Networks Continues Technology Leadership in Session Border Control With Enhancements to NBS-9000 Network Border Switch

WESTFORD, Mass., April 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Sonus Networks, Inc. (Nasdaq: SONS), a market leader in next generation IP-based network solutions, today announced significant enhancements to its existing NBS-9000, offered as a software upgrade on its proven GSX platform.  The Sonus NBS-9000 is a widely deployed SBC solution amongst tier-one service provider networks and enterprises globally.  It allows service providers to offer both IP to IP session management and TDM to IP capabilities on the same platform, driving capital and operational savings, increasing ROI on IP infrastructure investments, and enhancing deployment flexibility with ease of use.  NBS-9000 grew faster than the session border control market in 2009.

"Hybrid networks deployed using the NBS-9000 offer an elegant way for customers to migrate from TDM-based networks to all IP networks by simultaneously supporting both TDM to IP and IP to IP networks with software upgrades to the GSX. The enhancements we are announcing today, which extend the competitive advantage of our GSX, NBS and PSX solutions, reflect our continued investment and leadership in the rapidly expanding session border control segment," said Guru Pai, chief operating officer at Sonus Networks.  "We will continue to leverage our industry-leading heritage in SIP, media transcoding, scalability and centralized policy and routing to continue to offer our customers best in class products in session border control."

The enhancements to the NBS-9000 include:

• Improved Access SBC Functionality: Sonus has implemented improved security features to monitor and maintain SLAs with individual devices – especially useful in an access SBC environment.  In addition, there is increased support for industry standards like SIPConnect and SIP-B that enables NBS-9000 to accommodate diverse SIP implementations from a wide variety of clients, devices and SIP servers.  The product also adds integration support for third party PCRF implementations, making it more adaptable to the varying customer deployment configurations.

• Adverse Condition Recovery: The NBS-9000 enhances support of network operations and emergency call handling in the event of network outages or adverse network conditions.  In addition, new multi-level preemption and precedence features allow certain calls to have priority over existing calls in the network.  These sets of enhancements enable Sonus to serve government and emergency network deployments.

• Enhanced Call Control and Routing: The NBS-9000 now supports additional congestion control features that allow it to throttle messages to peers that are overloaded, improving overall network health.  In addition, the NBS has added support to query multiple DNS servers to augment its market leading routing capabilities.  The NBS-9000 can now directly interface to ENUM servers to bring more efficiency to routing.

• Higher Capacity, More Cost Effective Deployment: Hardware capacity improvements now permit the NBS-9000 to scale to even greater transcoding densities and call rates, bringing increased deployment efficiencies.

"Session border control is quickly becoming a necessity for communication service providers as the trend toward fixed and mobile IP-based services grows," commented Deborah Kish, Principal Analyst at Gartner.   "Vendors enhancing their products to include transcoding and centralized routing capabilities can bring more value to new and existing carrier and enterprise customers who require both TDM and IP capabilities on the same platform."

About the NBS-9000

The Sonus NBS-9000 Network Border Switch is a session border control solution available as a software upgrade on the GSX-9000, which is the world's most widely deployed IP voice platform. The NBS-9000 provides secure session management for IP flows with carrier grade reliability and scalability, and supports an industry leading array of signaling and media interworking capabilities.  Along with the Sonus PSX – a market leading policy and routing engine – the NBS-9000 provides best in class addressing, translation and centralized routing capabilities.

About Sonus Networks

Sonus Networks Inc. is a leader in IP networking with proven expertise in delivering secure, reliable and scalable next generation infrastructure and subscriber solutions. With customers in over 50 countries across the globe and over a decade of experience in transforming networks to IP, Sonus has enabled service providers and enterprises to capture and retain users and generate significant ROI.  Sonus products include media and signaling gateways, policy/routing servers, session border controllers and subscriber feature servers.  Sonus products are supported by a global services team with experience in design, deployment and maintenance of some of the world's largest and most complex IP networks.  For more information visit www.sonusnet.com.

This release may contain forward-looking statements regarding future events that involve risks and uncertainties. Readers are cautioned that these forward-looking statements are only predictions and may differ materially from actual future events or results.   Readers are referred to Item 1A "Risk Factors" of Sonus' Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2009, which identifies important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements.  Any forward-looking statements represent Sonus' views only as of today and should not be relied upon as representing Sonus' views as of any subsequent date.  While Sonus may elect to update forward-looking statements at some point, Sonus specifically disclaims any obligation to do so, except as required by law.

Sonus is a registered trademark of Sonus Networks, Inc.  All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

SOURCE Sonus Networks, Inc.