CMP writes about the same story but does not mention Vocaltec at all. I wonder if this is a hint that Vocaltec is becoming less relevant in this very important VOIP space. Has anybody actually tested or know of any close friends that has evaluated and tested a vocaltec unit?
Here is the CMP article:
AT&T Opens IP Telephony Lab
With 10 Partners
(02/19/99, 12:36 p.m. ET)
By Madeleine Acey, TechWeb
AT&T has signed up 10 industry players to
work on interoperability for IP telephony
products in a new lab.
The U.S. telecommunications giant said three service
providers -- Delta Three, GRIC, and @Home -- and
seven equipment vendors -- including Cisco, Ericsson,
and 3Com -- would work with AT&T on promoting
standards for global IP telephony and other advanced
IP services. The Global IP Telephony Interoperability
Lab would operate out of Florham Park, N.J., and San
Jose, Calif.
AT&T Labs public relations manager Kevin Compton
said Friday that the named partners were just the "first
wave" of participants and other telephone companies
such as Britain's British Telecommunications would
soon be brought on board.
He revealed that the two carriers, who announced a
wide-reaching strategic alliance in July 1998, were
planning to implement a "single IP architecture between
our networks," so international interoperability would be
vital.
"Next-generation IP services must be as reliable and
must work together as well as the telephone network
we've built over the past 100 years," said AT&T Labs
president and chief technology officer David Nagel.
The company said the lab would address a wide range
of issues down to the "nuts and bolts" of exchanging
billing information and ensuring network-management
software worked properly.
Each participating company would connect its IP
products to the Florham Park network where the
hundreds of AT&T employees would have their phones
and computers connected to an IP network as part of
the testing process, the company added.
"Our VOIP customers are demanding multi-vendor
interoperable solutions," said vice president of IP
communications at Lucent Technologies -- one of the
testing partners -- Chris Schoettle.
Senior analyst at British telecom consultancy Analysys,
Philip Lakelin, welcomed the lab, saying it was "high
time" for such a project to be launched.
"Interoperability, along with quality, is the most
important thing," he said. "It affects your ability to scale
your network."
He said standards bodies had been "playing around
with" H.323 -- essentially a videoconferencing standard
-- to cope with IP telephony. "But vendors have found
it's too much of a compromise. Vendors and service
providers desperately want interoperability. AT&T
have been good at that sort of thing -- standards work
--- particularly in the Internet arena.
"The only danger," he added, was the project "could
muddy the waters even more" if standards bodies didn't
get involved.
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