Article on Nortel call waiting while on the internet - Program allows you to answer the call and stay connected. Others do not.
Ken
zdnet.com
Nortel Fields Net Calls
By Kathleen Cholewka
March 4, 1999 8:20 AM ET
There's always room for improvement, especially when it comes to the imperfections of Internet telephony.
Northern Telecom introduced its Internet Call Waiting software in late 1997, and it has issued new releases of the product every six months since then. The latest release, version 2, debuted last week. The newest perk: It lets users answer an incoming call, via
Internet Protocol (IP) telephony, while they are still logged on to
the Internet.
An incoming call is indicated by a pop-up screen. Users can respond in several ways, including: rejecting the call; initiating an IP telephony phone call; or answering the call via regular telephony "fall back." In the last case, however, users lose the Net
connection, because the phone line is assigned to handle the
incoming voice call signal exclusively.
Internet call waiting offerings from software vendors eFusion and Lucent Technologies do not let users maintain a Net connection while conducting a telephone call of any kind.
Nortel Networks' IP telephony feature is compatible only with multimedia-enabled PCs. These PCs, according to Gary
Shechtman, senior manager of business development at Nortel,
account for 20 percent of existing computers and most new
computers sold.
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