Winn said the laboratory will test the only operational softswitch in Australia to ensure its seamless transition into the IP network.

Telstra will replace 116 exchange PSTN switches with five mated pairs of Alcatel softswitches in Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney by the end of 2008.

"Each softswitch is roughly the size of a refrigerator and can handle up to a million customers unlike current generation exchange switches which take up the size of a small building and can only service 120,000 customers," Winn said, adding they will result in a 90 percent reduction of hardware with up to a 2000 percent increase in capacity.

The lab can also diagnose the root cause of any significant network problems and test procedures associated with network upgrades and migrations.