From Telecomm online:
News Briefs
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Bellcore Unveils Solution
Seeing a demand from customers for a simple way to manage and respond to e-mail, voice, fax and pager messages, Bellcore is rolling out a next-generation unified messaging solution. Manitoba Telecom Services is the first service provider to trial the solution, which allows the sender's medium of choice to be different from the recipient's medium of retrieving the message. Other trials will be announced shortly. With the Bellcore system, voice and data transmissions are captured and stored in a single mailbox and the user can retrieve them using a telephone, cellular phone, fax, pager or the Internet. The Bellcore solution is based on the input of 12 of the company's partners and scales into the hundreds of millions of users.
Web Sites Fail on Customer Service
Forty-two percent of the top-ranked Web sites either took longer than five days to reply to customer e-mail inquiries, never responded, or were not accessible by e-mail, according to a recent report by Jupiter Communications. The Jupiter report involved 125 sites and focused on five categories: content, consumer brands, travel, retail and financial services. Most retail shopping sites performed the best, with 54 percent responding in less than one day. However, 19 percent of the travel sites tested took at least three days or never responded to the e-mail inquiry.
WinStar Tackles International Markets
WinStar Communications will accelerate expansion of its fixed wireless broadband network to six international markets by the end of the year and 50 international markets over the next five years. The company announced plans to serve Amsterdam, Paris, London, Tokyo, Sydney and Buenos Aires, drawing on an alliance formed with Lucent Technologies last year. WinStar has obtained spectrum licenses in the Netherlands, has filed applications for commercial licenses in Germany and France, and will file for licenses in Belgium and the United Kingdom early this year.
Agreement Reached on Merged Protocol
Level 3 Communications and Bellcore have merged their respective technical specifications into a new protocol designed to bridge the PSTN and emerging IP-based networks. The merged specification, to be called the media gateway control protocol (MGCP), is a combination of the Internet Protocol Device Control (IPDC) specification developed by a consortium formed by Level 3 and made up of leading hardware and software vendors, and the Simple Gateway Control Protocol (SGCP) developed by Bellcore and Cisco Systems. A draft of the specification was recently submitted to groups within the Internet Engineering Task Force and European Telecommunications Standards Institute for review.
US West: Wireline, Wireless on One Number
US West has launched a new service in the Phoenix market that allows existing customers to add a second phone line that can be used with both a wireless or wireline phone that have the same phone number and voice mailbox. In this scenario, if a subscriber will be away from home, he can turn on his PCS phone and calls will automatically follow him without having to punch in a special code. If a customer doesn't answer either phone or if they are in use, all messages go into a single voice mailbox. This type of approach, pioneered by Bell Canada, is the first application in the United States, according to the company. US West expects to introduce the service, called Everywhere Additional Line, in other cities where it offers PCS over the next several months.
Wireless DSL Hits Bay Area
Looking for ways to curtail some of the negatives associated with DSL services, broadband wireless local loop provider Wavepath has introduced wireless DSL to the San Francisco Bay area. Wavepath iSpeed, available from a handful of ISPs in the Bay area, virtually eliminates the current problem of black-out zones with a nearly 90-percent availability rate to homes and businesses. Installation time is less than a week, and the service retails for about $150 per month for 384-kbps two-way speed. Necessary equipment includes a wireless desktop modem, a small send/receive dish, and cabling for an installation fee starting at $800.
Microsoft, Qwest Strike Deal
Microsoft and Qwest Communications have formed an alliance that includes the licensing of a broad range of software, including Windows NT Server to Qwest and the purchase by Microsoft of $200 million worth of Qwest's common shares. The deal gives Qwest better technological footing as it delves into e-commerce; Microsoft achieves greater involvement in telephony and the Internet.
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