One of the few Tech stocks up today is a bandwidth situation. Perhaps Deutsche Telekom will need Amati/Seimens technology to pull it off:
<<Deutsche Telekom Selects VocalTec For Global Internet
Telephony Deployment; Acquires Stake in Market Leader
PR Newswire - August 28, 1997 06:01
DT VOCLF %CPR %TLS %MLM V%PRN P%PRN
Deutsche Telekom is First Major Carrier to Plan Worldwide Deployment of Internet Telephony Services
BONN, Germany and HERZLIYA, Israel, Aug. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Deutsche Telekom AG (NYSE: DT) and VocalTec Communications Ltd. (Nasdaq: VOCLF), the Internet (IP) Telephony Company, today announced a memorandum of understanding in which Deutsche Telekom will purchase more than $30 million of VocalTec products, services and support for a planned worldwide rollout of Internet telephony services and acquire a 21.1 percent stake in VocalTec.
The agreement calls for Deutsche Telekom to purchase VocalTec products and services over the next two-and-one-half years and to purchase 2.3 million ordinary shares of VocalTec stock. The memorandum of understanding contemplates that the companies will enter into comprehensive agreements which will be subject only to final approval by the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Telekom and the shareholders and Board of Directors of VocalTec.
Europe's largest telecommunications company and the third largest carrier in the world, Deutsche Telekom becomes the first major carrier to develop a portfolio of Internet telephony services to supplement its existing telephony services worldwide. The two companies already are working on the "T-NetCall" pilot in which Deutsche Telekom is giving 1,000 selected customers the ability to communicate via the Internet using a conventional or mobile telephone.
"We see enormous growth potential worldwide in Internet telephony and multimedia business applications via the Internet. This is why we will actively develop this market with our partner VocalTec," said Dr. Ron Sommer, Chairman of the Deutsche Telekom AG Board of Management, at the 1997 international radio exhibition "Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA) 97" in Berlin. "This partnership gives us the opportunity of quickly developing a high-quality product portfolio for Internet telephony. We are proud to be the first major international carrier to move forward with a full-scale global deployment."
Commenting on the significance of the preliminary agreement, Dr. Elon Ganor, chairman and chief executive officer of VocalTec, said, "After providing a phone system that has not changed fundamentally in 30 years, the telecommunications industry is beginning to recognize the need for change. We expect more and more major telcos to shift away from further massive investment in the traditional circuit-switched infrastructure in favor of developing a more flexible, cost-effective packet-switched IP network infrastructure on which to base services that include voice, fax, video, whiteboard, multipoint conferencing and a host of other applications.
"Deutsche Telekom's emphasis on innovation is apparent in their status as the world leader in high speed data communications and use of ATM technology and as the leading provider of ISDN. We are proud to have been chosen by them to supply state-of-the-art Internet telephony products, technical support and consulting services that will help create an entirely new value proposition for the industry. We are looking forward to supplying applications for this new infrastructure that put rich multimedia features and flexible call control capabilities in the hands of Deutsche Telecom's customers around the world," said Ganor.
VocalTec Communications software enables audio, video, data, text and collaborative communications between personal computers and other devices over the Internet. The company is a leader in developing innovative, open standards products that bridge the Internet and the traditional public switched telephone network (PSTN) and drive the convergence of computing and telephone technologies. A recent Frost & Sullivan study found that VocalTec had garnered almost 79% of the carrier segment the VoIP gateway market and 79 percent of the consumer segment of the VoIP client market in 1996. The study reinforces the importance of the carrier segment predicting that, out of the total Internet telephony gateway market, the carrier portion will grow from 26% in 1996 to 47 percent by 2001. The Frost & Sullivan report predicts that the overall VoIP market will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 149 percent to $1.89 billion by the end of 2001.
About Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telecom, with a turnover of DM 63.1 billion in 1996, is Europe's largest telecommunications company and the third largest carrier worldwide. Offering a complete range of products and services in Germany, Deutsche Telecom leads in mobile radio services, has a cable television network connected to almost 17 million homes, over 44 million telephone lines in service, about 6.3 million ISDN channels and actually 1.6 million customers in its online service, T-Online, making Deutsche Telekom the largest Internet provider in Europe.>>
|
