SCOPE OF THE REPORT

This report provides a comprehensive view of overall market and technical developments in digital central office switching. It differs from the previous reports in our "Dittberner PERSPECTIVE - A GLOBAL TELECOM TECHNOLOGY SERIES" (formerly known as "PROJECT ESS") in that it focuses on short-term enhancements in or around the digital switch that can be procured with modest capital expenditures, and which have a rapid payback (2 - 4 years).

However, we find that digital switch suppliers are developing cost-saving or new revenue producing add-ons in or around their switch. Some of these are offered today only by a few major suppliers. Thus, one of the objectives of this report is to evaluate these developments, and recommend the attractive ones to our readers. If their digital switch suppliers have not yet developed and offered these, our service provider readers can and should demand that their legacy switch vendors provide them also!