Unisys Corp will today announce a series of configurations and software for its A-series mainframes designed to give telephone companies more flexibility in offering consumers a wider variety of services on their main exchanges. Phone companies already are providing a lot of these services, such as phone mail, but the new system will provide more flexibility to test ideas. The idea is to interface the A-series machine to the digital telephone exchange, allowing it to take over the aplications that at present require new processors in the exchange – thus cutting costs. Services supported by the Network Application Platform will include things like store-and-forward fax, more extensive screening of calls, and time-of-day barring of numbers.
