Tandem Computers Inc’s Tandem Telecommunications Systems Inc has been quietly prospecting away down in Texas for three or four years, and the company suddenly looks to have hit paydirt. This week the company stood up with AT&T Co’s AT&T Network Systems to announce a collaboration to help US telephone companies meet their equipment needs for the Advanced Intelligent Networks system developed at the Baby Bells’ Bell Communications Research joint development laboratory. The initial test began this month at an AT&T facility in Lisle, Illinois to evaluate the ability of AT&T’s Number 5ESS public telephone exchange and Tandem Telecom’s TSCP-1000 service control point to work together in accordance with Release 0 of the BellCore specification. The service control point is a large database that determines how a call should be handled and relays that information to the switch via a high-speed data network. Intelligent networks distribute processing power and the ability to provide ancillary services beyond the bounds of the exchange to database nodes throughout the network so that a new application, once installed, would make a new service widely available in the telephone company’s network. Such services include outgoing call screening and management, enabling users to put time of day and day of week routing controls on calls plac ed from their homes; and personal number service, for users that want to be reached at a single number that can be programmed to follow them from location to location. Tandem launched the TSCP-1000 in January (CI No 1,353) in versions for both its proprietary Guardian operating system and its Unix box.
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