An interesting read on the current state of SS7, circa 2013: http://blog.pt.com/vendors-eol-announcement http://blog.pt.com/vendors-eol-announcement The 3G/4G

An interesting read on the current state of SS7, circa 2013: http://blog.pt.com/vendors-eol-announcement http://blog.pt.com/vendors-eol-announcement The 3G/4G segment of subscribers will have a distribution of 3.4 billion using 3G (SS7) services and .9 billion using 4G services. The total outcome of this research indicates that a total of 7.65 billion subscribers, out of a total of 8.5 billion subscribers, will remain on SS7-based networks in 2017. Verizon went on to further explain that a final 2G/3G (SS7) sunset timeframe decision has not been made. The good news is vendors are not happy considering the availability of hardware is will decrease significantly over the same time period, hopefully speeding the sunset for this technology. Some service providers are planning on a strategy of consolidating their network, having no support and cannibalizing existing spare equipment for hardware support.