Since its inception in 1998, Nextel Partners has offered voice and Internet data wireless services in 58 small to mid-size coverage areas, including 13 of the largest markets in the country. Service areas include large parts of Florida, Texas and New York. Coverage extends through major areas of the Midwest and South and in Hawaii. The company's affiliate, Nextel Communications, serves larger Tier 1 markets.

Customers of Nextel Partners benefit from seamless national mobile calling over the Nextel® Nationwide Network. The company also provides Nextel's pioneering Push-to-Talk service, which enables walkie-talkie-like communications between mobile handsets. Additional offerings include Blackberry®-enabled and Global Positioning System (GPS) services, and text messaging.

Nextel Partners differentiates itself by offering consistent rates to callers anywhere in the Nextel digital mobile network, billing based on seconds of airtime following the first minute, and rate plans that do not change between "peak" and "off-peak" minutes.

In parallel with today's rising demand for mobile services, Nextel Partners has enjoyed steady, if not explosive, growth. The company ended Q1 2005 with 1,701,800 digital subscribers, up 29 percent from the previous year's first quarter, according to public financial filings. During the same period, net income grew from $3.5 million to $56.5 million, a record 15-fold increase.

Against this backdrop of burgeoning demand, Nextel Partners decided to boost network capacity and reduce equipment space requirements in two of its busiest regions before its customer base could grow beyond its ability to continue delivering high quality services. This required installation of new higher capacity Base Station Controllers (iBSCs). The iBSCs, supplied by Nextel Partners' main equipment supplier Motorola, each required connection to a DCS system linked via a fiber interface. However, the company's legacy DCS units lacked such fiber connections.

Seeking an alternative, Nextel Partners evaluated replacements offered by its two longtime DCS suppliers. But one solution lacked a fiber interface and the other was prohibitively expensive. A far more cost-effective and flexible approach, the company decided, involved deploying Turin Networks Traverse 2000 platforms to perform electrical to optical conversion necessary to send calls to the new iBSCs.

The Traverse 2000 platform is a multiservice transport system that integrates wideband (VT1.5) and broadband (STS-1) DCS functionality with SONET/SDH Add Drop Multiplexer (ADM) and Ethernet switching in a single, compact shelf. The 19-inch wide chassis features a modular, distributed architecture that enables service providers to quickly add capacity and integrate new technologies in response to market and customer demands.

Capacity upgrades and support for new services can be added quickly and easily by inserting plug-in modules.

Optical and electrical service interface options range from DS-1 to OC-192, DS-3 Transmux, as well as 10/100 and Gigabit Ethernet. Switching capacity is scalable in small increments, in contrast to competing products that require upgrades in much larger bandwidth allocations. This eliminates the need to purchase a more costly, higher capacity system before the need arises.

Nextel Partners was attracted to the Turin product's broad number of interfaces, easy expandability, scalability, small footprint, and low upfront and continuing expenses, among other features. "The Turin platform is a very good solution to our problem. It performs the optical to electrical DCS conversion and is very cost effective with lots of room for growth" said David Christensen, National Systems Engineer, Nextel Partners. "If we want to add higher capacity or optical handoffs, this box is ready."

The carrier also was impressed by Turin's customer service. "Because Turin is a smaller company, it can more efficiently and effectively adapt to our business needs than a larger organization." Christensen said.

The modular capability has allowed Nextel Partners to configure new Traverse 2000 platforms with VT/TU modules that switch and groom wideband traffic, providing a scalable but compact and cost-effective DCS solution. A single module provides 5 Gbps of VT1.5 (and/or VC-11/12) cross-connection capacity. As network capacity and demand grows, Nextel Partners can add additional modules and expansion shelves to provide more than 20 Gbps of non-blocking wideband switching capacity with a single system.

"The Turin solution dovetails with our infrastructure, so we're able to perform interoffice exchanges without using additional resources." said Dennis Garber a switch technician for Nextel Partners. "You can use the platform as a point concentrator and send the traffic out within the office many different ways."

In early 2005 Nextel Partners installed and activated one Turin 2000 platform in its Pensacola, Florida regional office, and one in its Louisville, Kentucky switching center. "Deployment was fast, easy, and trouble free. The platforms are extremely user friendly." Garber said. "You can provision one in 30 minutes and have a couple of optical rings operating very quickly. As a result, you don't have tremendous overhead in terms of time."

Both of Nextel Partners regional Mobile Switching Centers receive transport signals from Local Exchange Carriers via leased fiber lines. LEC-owned equipment then de-multiplexes the optical signal into an electrical DS-3 signal, which is handed off to Nextel Partner's legacy DCS. The older equipment relays traffic to the Traverse 2000 platform. The Traverse 2000 platform then performs the electrical to optical conversion necessary to send the signals to the iBSCs.

The Traverse 2000 platform offers cost effective optical interface capabilities that are unsupported by legacy DCS equipment in a much smaller chassis. "Turin offers a cost effective optical DCS capability that augments existing legacy DCS equipment without huge capital expenditure." Christensen said. The fast provisioning capability will provide Nextel Partners with a strategic advantage as the company's subscriber base increases, Garber said. "We're growing very, very rapidly and the ability to turn up subscribers fast is critical. The Turin platform lets us increase capacity quickly so we can provide the best service possible to our new and existing customers."