Telecom Gear Vendors Form Interoperability Group

LAS VEGAS — A coalition of telecommunication equipment manufacturers has formed the Communications Platforms Trade Association, or CP-TA.

The group is seeking to accelerate common specifications for interoperability, and is not meant to define specific backplane or interface specs such as the Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture.

John Fryer, director of technology marketing for Motorola Inc., said the group is seeking to fill a gap between the PCI Industrial Computing Manufacturers Group, on the low end, and the SCOPE Alliance, a group formed in 2000 to develop high-level profiles for specific telecom equipment such as a DSL access multiplexer.

"There were general profiles from SCOPE, and there were interface details from PICMG, but there was little to tell someone how to design for interoperability," Fryer said. "This is what CP-TA aims to do."

Among the founding members are Motorola, Intel Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., Fujitsu Ltd., Siemens Computers, and Nortel Networks Inc.