TeleContinuity offers survivable communication solution

loop outage, of picking up the telephone traffic. The TeleContinuity solutions redirects and reroutes central switch traffic to alternate facilities — or reroutes individual calls to the intended called party with no interruption of service.

Here are a few more things you may want to note about the solution (the first two are aimed at the more technically inclined):

* TeleContinuity does not integrate with the SS7, and all connections to all the POPS are through Q.931 signaling over Voice DS3/T1/PRI Connections.

* The meshed TeleContinuity POPS route calls are based on Application Layer 7 routing, using a modified form of SIP. The intelligence of the network is thus performed in an application and not in the link or interface layer (that is, Layer 3, 4 or 5). The intelligence in the network is based on the interaction of the routing engine with several data repositories on the network, and the proprietary routing engine evaluates information on PSTN/IP congestion, bandwidth utilization and availability, and user information in the process of making its routing decisions.

* It is a voice-only solution, guaranteeing the continuation of voice services, but not data transmissions. TeleConitnuity is doing so for a reason. As far as we can tell, no one has addressed the problem of voice continuity in the marketplace from the perspective of survivability. This means that today TeleContinuity has no competition (as evidenced by several sole source agreements the company signed). The data marketplace, on the other hand, is saturated with competition..

* TeleContinuity does not need to sign any roaming or exchange agreement with any carrier — and the individual subscriber does not need to do anything, either. Note that if customers are willing to pay the per-minute fee, they may use TeleContinuity as a telework solution even during non-disaster times.

* Service may be purchased as an annual subscription at $5 per line or extension per month plus setup fees (which start at $2500). All usage is billed back to the customer in minute increments ($.05-$.07 per minute).

* As is the case with all other solutions: If there is no power, there is no service. For the system to work, subscribers must at least have a dial tone or the system does not operate (see our comments on power failure above).

Telecontinuity is currently in use at several U.S. government agencies and major financial services firms. The system was recently tested — and proven valuable — in an actual service interruption at a financial services firm: The firm’s telecom line had been cut, but services were restored within 90 seconds.

Telecontinuity has received more than $9 million in funding support from NIST (ATP grant), the State of Maryland, and private investors, including, most recently, an investment by the Stevenson, Maryland-based Nobska Ventures.