The industry is taking BIG STEPS forward.
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VocalTec and Lucent IP Telephony Platforms First To Interoperate
ITXC - First to Deploy and Support Interoperable Multi-Vendor
Network
HERZLIYA, Israel, MURRAY HILL/NORTH BRUNSWICK,
N.J.--June 9, 1998-- Announced at SUPERCOMM98 in Atlanta,
Georgia and Voice on the Net Europe '98 in Oslo, Norway.
In a move that market analysts say will advance the IP telephony
industry a giant leap forward, VocalTec Communications Ltd.
(Nasdaq: VOCLF - news), Lucent Technologies, and ITXC Corp today
announced plans to develop full interoperability between IP telephony
platforms from VocalTec and Lucent. ITXC will be the first carrier to
operate a fully interoperable IP telephony network using VocalTec's
and Lucent's products.
''Lack of vendor interoperability has remained one of the single most
serious impediments to the IP telephony industry,'' said Hilary Mine,
senior vice president at Probe Research. ''ITXC, Lucent, and VocalTec
are moving the industry forward to the next level by implementing true
gateway and gatekeeper interoperability. ITXC faces immediate and
real demand for solutions that are functional today. At the same time,
no service provider wants to be locked into a single vendor. Lucent and VocalTec will enable ITXC to meet its customers' longer term
requirements by offering not only vendor choice today, but also
future-proofed interoperability on next generation networks.''
In response to customer demands for interoperability, VocalTec,
Lucent, and ITXC will develop complete interoperability between the
Lucent PacketStar(tm) Internet Telephony Server for Service
Providers (ITS-SP) and the VocalTec Ensemble Architecture. This
solution will address voice communications, fax communications,
routing, thorization, authentication, accounting, billing, network
management and settlement services. Under the first phase of this plan, the companies expect to deliver interoperable VocalTec and Lucent gateways running on ITXC's commercial WWeXchangeSM Service in
Fall 1998.
''As a customer of Lucent and VocalTec, ITXC spearheaded this effort
by two leading providers of Internet telephony products because
interoperability is essential to our own customers,'' said Tom Evslin,
chairman of ITXC Corp ''Until now these resellers, carriers, Internet
service providers (ISPs), and other Internet telephony service poviders have had the unsatisfactory choice of either being restricted to a single vendor with no possibility of second sourcing or running products from multiple vendors in parallel, incompatible networks. We will provide true multi-vendor interoperability in our WWeXchange network so that our customers will be the first to benefit from this expanded choice.''
''For the IP telephony market to grow, interoperability between leading manufacturers' products is a must . For this purpose, VocalTec is taking the lead with Lucent to bring to market IP telephony network solutions that offer seamless interoperability,'' said Dr. Elon Ganor, CEO and chairman at VocalTec Communications. ''Our collaboration is a
testament to the strong commitment that both of our organizations
have not only to the H.323 standard but also to the fundamental
importance of playing an active role on the standards-setting bodies.
Interoperability is an important step forward for the IP telephony
industry and for VocalTec as it affirms and enhances our role in driving this industry forward.'' |
