Converged Telecom Signaling Software with SS7, Diameter and 5G Firewalls

Headquartered in Amersfoort, the Netherlands, BroadForward develops signaling software for communication service providers, covering routing, interworking, security and number portability across 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G, Wi-Fi and fixed networks. Customers include mobile network operators, MVNOs and MVNEs, IPX carriers, IoT and M2M connectivity providers, vendors and systems integrators. The management team came out of long-running telecom infrastructure companies including Acision, Tekelec, Nortel and Lucent, and the company describes more than 25 years of collective experience building and supporting carrier-grade signaling products.

Everything runs on a single code base called the BFX Unified Signaling Core, a converged platform on which each network function is a licensed application rather than a separate appliance. The same core handles SS7, Diameter, HTTP/2, RADIUS, LDAP and ENUM, and hosts the Diameter Signaling Controller, Signaling Transfer Point, Service Communication Proxy, Security Edge Protection Proxy, Equipment Identity Register and Binding Support Function. Deployment is hardware-agnostic, spanning bare metal, virtual machines, containers and Kubernetes, so hybrid legacy and 5G traffic is managed in one environment.

The security portfolio spans three firewalls — SS7FW, DFW and 5GFW — aligned to GSMA FS.11, FS.19 and FS.36 respectively, screening message structure, sender origin, subscriber identifiers, URI and HTTP method, and location- or time-based anomalies. No rule is hard-coded, and a transparent mode lets operators log and evaluate new policies against live traffic before enforcement begins. The vendor reports use by over 100 service providers, and states its SEPP powered the world's first live 5G standalone roaming connection.