Explaining 46 Labs Tandem Services

What role do Tandem Services play in today's telecom ecosystem? 


Tandem Services is basically a fancy way of describing how to get calls routed to your numbers and to your customers. And there’s a variety of ways - including local tandem services, access tandem, toll-free tandem and more. There’s all sorts of different things out there in different flavors. 

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The bottom line is, “How do you get phone calls that originate from other carriers back to your customers?”

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When would a carrier choose to use tandem routing instead of direct routing? 


You would use tandem routing primarily out of necessity. Your numbers have to be honed to a registered tandem in the Public Switch Telephone Network (PSTN), because no one can ever have a direct route to every telecom originator out there. So, by having a tandem, you can still have direct routing for peers where you get a lot of traffic from, but for everything else, that's going to hit the PSTN and needs to be switched according to routing instructions that are in the Local Exchange Routing Guide (LERG). You have to have a tandem provider.

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How do tandem services help with scalabilities reaching across networks? 


Tandem Services basically connect all of the other smaller networks and networks that may not be SIP-enabled or sophisticated, but have traditional TDM routing. Having Tandem Services allows you to connect to smaller markets. It allows those smaller markets to connect to you and reach your customers. 

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What would you say are some of the biggest challenges providers face with tandem services?

One of the biggest changes in the landscape has been for Internet Protocol Enabled Service (IPES) providers. Having a good tandem provider allows you to host your IPES number blocks and not have to worry about all of the regulatory complexities and additional complexity when it comes to dealing with publishing your Common Language Location Identifier (CLLI) codes and knowing what a CLLI code is. Tandem Services allow you to rely on your tandem provider to do those things to ensure that your customers are getting calls delivered from anywhere in the PSTN.

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Where do you see 46 Labs relevance in the tandem service world?

46 Labs is uniquely positioned in Tandem Services because we're not strictly a TDM tandem services provider. We have TDM tandem services. We are connected to the PSTN. We've got four registered tandems for access throughout the US. But more importantly, we've been ahead of the curve of having IP tandem switching to the major telecom networks that are out there as well as some of these smaller and major Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLEC). So when it comes time to change, we have the capability to interact with more legacy telecommunication providers that still need those services but may not have been able to make the changes quickly - however, we have all the efficiencies on the back-end of having IP-direct connect tandem services to the large carriers. And it's creating that hybrid model, staying ahead of it, so when other companies do change, we're already prepared. We have that productized and ready-to-go.

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How will 46 Labs remain positioned as a relevant leader in the future of tandem services?


If you look at the current FCC landscape and the mandate for IP-interconnect and to shed the TDM current environment, 46 Labs is already prepared to navigate our clients and future clients for these shifting regulatory requirements. But having the legacy tandem network that we have at TDM, it allows us to bridge that gap within the next five years.

Over the next 10 years, we’ll have so many IP interconnects with so many different networks throughout the US and internationally. Our routing capabilities to bring in calls into the United States - as well as do peering, between networks, and facilitate peering - without companies having to go out and do their own point-to-point connections or buy fiber between the networks or buy waves, allows us to be that kind of futuristic tandem where customers can go in and use software to find networking to do your own peering connection to a far end network.

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