IP phones are PBX alternative -- Technology continues to emerge, but technical problems still need to be ironed out
Stephanie Green
January 31, 2000, Issue: 879
Section: Convergence
Boston - IP phones continue to emerge as an alternative to standard PBX systems, but experts said it will be a while before the phones can be everything vendors promise.
It will take improvements in function, power and application capacity for IP phones to be embraced by businesses, said Deb Mielke, principal at Treillage Network Strategies Inc., a Dallas-based consulting firm.
IP telephone systems plug directly into a company's LAN and send packetized voice over an IP network. However, they are limited in functionality, said Mielke. In the next six months, phones should be more adept at integrating directories and will offer better convergence at a lower cost, she said.
The market should pick up in the next six months, with new players and options to integrate IP and analog phones so they are more network-based, said Mielke.
Right now two advantages of the phones are toll bypass for customers making international calls and the ability for the phone to register itself at a new location, said Hank Lambert, manager of product marketing for enterprise voice infrastructure at Cisco Systems Inc., San Jose, Calif.
The technology is close to sparking customer interest, said Andrew Tyler, a technical services manager at NTS MicroAge, an East Hartford, Conn.-based VAR. It makes sense for a company with a large number of corporate clients and field offices to have IP phones, he said.
However, IP phones are relatively expensive, said Tyler. The price of the phones is comparable or slightly more than the price of a standard digital proprietary phone, he said.
Right now a lot of smaller customers are installing trial systems, but that should change by the end of this year and into 2001, with the market growing significantly in 2001, said David DeLorenzo, product manager for IP telephones at Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill, N.J.
Not everyone is enamored with the technology, however. Dan Posner, chief executive of Tech Management Solutions, a Boca Raton, Fla.-based reseller, said he would stay away from IP phones for at least another three to five years.
"[The technology is] not terrible, but it has got some time before it's fully cooked," he said.
Quality on IP networks still is only a best effort, said Elizabeth Ussher, program director at The Meta Group Inc., Stamford, Conn. However, quality problems lie in network reliability, not in the phones themselves, she said.
Also, standards for the technology are not yet completely established. Standards include Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), the Internet Engineering Task Force's Megaco protocol (formerly Media Gateway Control Protocol), and H.323. An International Telecommunications Union (ITU) standard, H.323 still is open to interpretation by vendors, Ussher said.
Most IP phones offer basic features such as a standard desk phone, voice mail and conference calling.
Some examples of IP phones recently unveiled by major vendors include Cisco IP Telephone Model 12 SP+, Cisco's IP Phone Model 30 VIP and 3Com Corp.'s NBX series of multiline telephones. Lucent is developing IP phones for availability in the third or fourth quarter of this year.
3Com's next generation of IP phones will support multiple protocols such as SIP, Megaco and H.323, said Ed Wadbrook, director of product management and marketing for voice solutions at 3Com, Santa Clara, Calif. NBX's series of multiline telephones currently support the 802.3 standard and can plug into any LAN or switchboard, he said. Phones by Lucent and Cisco also will support H.323, he said.
Copyright © 2000 CMP Media Inc.
techweb.com |
