PR: LUCENT TECHNOLOGIES UNVEILS BEST-IN-CLASS, HIGHLY SCALEABLE AND RELIABLE INTERNET TELEPHONY SOLUTION FOR SERVICE PROVIDERS
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All, Don't you just love it when a company releases news of one of their new products, and they call it "best of class?" Chutzpa!
I was a little surprised to see the list of "futures" in this release, such as SS7 support, QoS and enhanced services such as call forwarding. I'd have thought that these would have been soup by now, coming from LU.
But they apparently did the right things in fortifying it with NEBS compliance [the majority of larger service providers like the ILECs and 1st and 2nd tier IXCs wouldn't consider it for anything permanent, otherwise] and scaling it adequately for the larger emerging ITSPs.
While we're on the subject, has anyone here given any thought as to how LU and ASND will marry their respective PacketStar and Mulit-Voice offerings? There's a considerable amount of overlap here, despite ASND's offering being embedded in remote concentrator devices, and LU's focus on packet switching entities. ASND has reached a fair level of success with their approach, and they "have" made their SS7 features available. It would seem to me that they should have a winning combo here, if they can come to terms on how to integrate the two.
What do you think?
Regards, Frank Coluccio
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LUCENT TECHNOLOGIES UNVEILS BEST-IN-CLASS, HIGHLY SCALEABLE AND RELIABLE INTERNET TELEPHONY SOLUTION FOR SERVICE PROVIDERS
Business Wire - January 18, 1999 08:49
MURRAY HILL, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--January 18, 1999--
Lucent extends PacketStar Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) family with modular, network-class VoIP gateway, gatekeeper, network management and billing solution
Lucent Technologies today announced a next-generation, Bell Labs-developed, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solution that enables network service providers to deploy IP networks that can carry millions of inexpensive voice and fax calls and to expand into revenue-generating services such as prepaid billing cards.
Addressing a VoIP services market which International Data Corp. expects to grow to over $4 billion in revenue this year, Lucent unveiled the PacketStar(tm) IP Gateway 1000, PacketStar IP Gatekeeper and PacketStar IP Manager. These competitively-priced, high-performance products enable service providers to design virtually 99.999 percent reliable VoIP networks that can carry up to two million voice or fax calls per day - more than the entire industry's VoIP calls per day.
"With the PacketStar IP Gateway 1000, PacketStar IP Gatekeeper and PacketStar IP Manager, our service provider customers now have a 'ready-to-go' network solution to deploy production-level scaleable VoIP services," said Chris Schoettle, vice president, IP Communications at Lucent. "This is the VoIP platform on which to build robust differentiated voice and fax services over IP networks."
The PacketStar IP Gateway 1000 solution is targeted at service providers who are ready to deploy VoIP services worldwide, including CLECs, ISPs, next-generation telcos, IXCs, PTTs, and other network providers.
Gary Frank, CEO of VoCall Communications Inc., an industry-leading prepaid billing card supplier, has selected two PacketStar IP Gateway 1000s that enable VoCall's prepaid billing customers to place inexpensive long-distance calls over the Internet between two of its central office switches. "We are delighted to trial Lucent's PacketStar IP Gateway 1000 because we wanted an ultra-reliable solution that gives us 99.999 percent reliability, in addition to multi-zone management. VoCall looks forward to be able to give our customers modular, best-in-class voice/data gateways as we build our network over many locations around the world."
"Lucent's PacketStar IP Gateway 1000 announcement is great news for CLECs and next-generation service providers who are looking for real-world, end-to-end VoIP solutions," said Jeff Pulver, publisher of The Pulver Report (http://pulver.com/reports). "Lucent is showing service providers how to build high-capacity networks that can carry huge volumes of VoIP minutes, and at the same time provide additional revenue through value-added services, such as multi-zone billing."
PacketStar IP Gateway 1000
The PacketStar IP Gateway 1000 is based on Lucent's PortMaster(r) 4 integrated access concentrator platform and ComOS(r) operating system. It provides a fault-tolerant, next-generation platform for offering real-time voice and fax services, dynamically allocated on any port. This NEBS (Network Equipment Building Standard) Level III-compliant product has a high-capacity ATM switching fabric in the backplane. It is a highly scaleable platform that ranges from four to 28 T1s or three to 21 E1s, resulting in a high port density of 672 DS0s per gateway. In addition, up to five gateways can be stacked in a seven-foot rack, resulting in 3,360 DS0s, the industry's most competitive footprint. The product has an industry-leading low latency of 80 milliseconds end-to-end for superior voice quality and supports the G.729a and G.711 codecs, and elemedia(tm) H.323 software and gatekeeper toolkit.
"In the tradition of Lucent's commitment to service providers' number one real world issue, the PacketStar IP Gateway 1000 brings '5 nines' of reliability to the VoIP access platform. "The PacketStar IP Gateway 1000 is a welcome addition to fill out Lucent's line of converged voice/data platforms," said Hilary Mine, Executive Vice President, Probe Research, Inc.
The PacketStar IP Gateway 1000 solution implements the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) H.323 version 2.0 standard. Continuing Lucent's leadership in interoperability, the product will support the iNOW!(tm) (Interoperability Now!) Profile, which is published jointly by Lucent, VocalTec and ITXC and addresses gateway-to-gateway, gatekeeper-to-gatekeeper and gatekeeper-to-clearinghouse interoperability for phone-to-phone and fax-to-fax services.
Subsequent releases of the product will support the Signaling System 7 (SS7) protocol, enabling network integration and feature transparency - such as call forwarding, call waiting and toll-free services -- between the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and IP networks. The PacketStar IP Gateway 1000 will also provide future support for emerging IP telephony protocols, such as the Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP), and it will incorporate Quality of Service (QoS) capabilities.
PacketStar IP Gatekeeper
The PacketStar IP Gatekeeper is a standalone gatekeeper - with a centralized database -- that provides authentication, call routing and billing support. The scaleability of the gatekeeper enables service providers to build networks with support for up to 5,000 simultaneous calls or more than two million calls per day. An optional product with the PacketStar IP Gatekeeper is the Bell Labs-developed Service Ready(tm) Internet Telephony Prepay Billing Server, an account management and customer care system that allows service providers to offer prepaid billing support for up to one million subscribers per server.
PacketStar IP Manager
The PacketStar IP Manager offers an easy-to-use graphical user interface to provide administrators with a centrally managed, whole network view. This is a market-leading capability that enables service providers to implement operations, administration, maintenance, and provisioning functions. The browser-based graphical user interface uses color-coded icons to display and manage all the PacketStar IP Gateway 1000 and PacketStar IP Gatekeeper network elements for simplified network management.
Lucent's NetCare(r) Data Services will provide support for service providers buying the PacketStar IP Gateway 1000 solution by offering on-site installation, maintenance, consulting and professional services.
General availability of the first release of the PacketStar IP Gateway 1000, PacketStar IP Gatekeeper and PacketStar IP Manager is scheduled for the end of February in the U.S., Canada, Japan, Australia, and 18 European countries. A subsequent release will be available in June.
The PacketStar IP Gateway 1000 has a U.S. list price of $325 to $600 per port, depending on configuration. The PacketStar IP Gatekeeper and PacketStar IP Manager list at $150,000 and $45,000, respectively, for the turnkey software and hardware solution. Remote technical support is included with the products during the one-year warranty period. Standard volume discounts are available. To assist service providers and telcos to enter the Internet telephony business quickly and inexpensively, Newcourt Credit's/Lucent Technologies Product Finance Group is also offering a suite of financial options.
These next-generation products join Lucent's PacketStar VoIP Strategic Continuum(tm) of modular, best-in-class voice/data gateways for service providers building networks that scale worldwide. Over the last year, Lucent has led the way in developing the PacketStar VoIP family of communications networking products, including the Lucent PacketStar Internet Telephony System, the PacketStar IP Services Platform, the PathStar Access Server, and the PacketStar Gateway Solution.
Lucent Technologies, headquartered in Murray Hill, N.J., designs, builds and delivers a wide range of public and private networks, communications systems and software, data networking systems, business telephone systems and microelectronics components. Bell Labs is the research and development arm for the company. Additional information about Lucent Technologies is available on the company's web site at www.lucent.com. PacketStar, Service Ready and Continuum are trademarks of Lucent Technologies. iNOW! is a trademark of Lucent, ITXC and VocalTec. PortMaster, ComOS and NetCare are registered trademarks of Lucent Technologies. |
