Traditional Firebar equipment is deployed on the line side of a central office switch. It terminates individual copper pairs to/from a special ‘red phone’ deployed at a voluntary fireman’s home. The phone companies are migrating their networks towards packet based networking technologies as opposed to the current circuit switch environment. This process typically involves replacing the current copper based loop plant with fiber based Digital Loop Carriers. Because of this the Firebar service that relies on individual copper pair terminations cannot work. XOP Networks Enhanced Firebar equipment (Firebar application running on the Universal Service Node) is designed to be placed on the trunk side of the switch instead. By placing the Firebar equipment on the trunk side a phone company can deliver the Firebar service to Firemens regular land line phones. The XOP Networks Firebar equipment is capable of remembering multiple phone numbers (landline phone, cell phone, office phone etc.) belonging to a fireman. These days majority of people carry cell phones. Therefore having separate ‘red phone’ just for emergency purposes is not really necessary or desirable. The XOP Networks Firebar approach makes it more flexible to reach out to a fireman at one of his/her multiple numbers when actually needed.

Tags: XOP Enhanced Firebar

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 at 12:05 pm and is filed under Firebar Conferencing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.