Some news on competition in the voice-over-IP market. Apparently WCOM likes the idea.
WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 7, 1998--Franklin Telecom (OTC/BB:FTEL - news) Wednesday announced that its Internet subsidiary, FNet Corp., has signed a letter of intent with WorldCom to collocate Tempest Data Voice Gateways in WorldCom sites.
WorldCom has POP sites that cover the entire world. Initial deployment will be to major cities in the United States. The subsequent definitive agreement will facilitate the rollout of the previously announced FNet Internet telephone network (''FNet Announces Premier InterNet Telephone Network'' -- Oct. 27, 1997).
The Tempest allows FNet to support telephone-to-telephone service over a national network, using voice-over-IP technology developed by FNet's parent company, Franklin Telecom.
According to Franklin's president and chief executive officer, Frank Peters: ''After signing a definitive agreement with WorldCom, we should be able to provide coverage from Washington state to Florida, California to Maine. It will include all major metropolitan areas. With the deployment of these Tempests, FNet's telephone service will be available to most of the U.S. population by making a simple, local call.''
In addition, the WorldCom agreement will allow early deployment to key overseas locations. Peters continued: ''One of our priorities is to provide FNet coverage to international locations which are important to American-based multinational corporations. We are pleased that our arrangement with WorldCom will allow us to move into this area more quickly than we anticipated.
''The Franklin Tempest Data Voice Gateways will be interconnected by a private intranet and the public Internet, thus providing very low-cost telephone service through our global telephone network.''
According to Peter Thornton, vice president of sales: ''The move toward voice over the Internet marks a significant change in the way large corporations will be doing business. It's as exciting a technological advance as the advent of the fax machine.
''We are well positioned to move into this new frontier. As we've demonstrated at recent Internet telephony shows, our voice quality has proved noticeably superior to our competition!''
The Tempest incorporates Franklin Telecom's own hardware technology, which includes a multiprocessor DSP card for voice compression and encoding. This technology has proved to offer the lowest delay across the IP network, significantly adding to the natural sound of the call.
FNet's network will incorporate several unique features. For instance, the user can adjust the delivery volume of the call while the call is in progress by using the telephone keypad. FNet customers using their authorization codes can also ''anchor'' on the network. This allows any number of subsequent calls to be made without having to re-enter a PIN number or authorization code.
The primary business of Franklin Telecom, founded in 1981, is the design and manufacturing of communications devices, high-speed LAN, WAN, telco and satellite systems and software. Franklin has an installed base of more than 100,000 nodes worldwide. Franklin's Internet subsidiaries, FNet and Internet Passport, provide services using FTEL products. |
