Ascend Communications Inc. and ACT Networks Inc. are set to offer voice-over-IP and voice-over-ATM products to service providers
By Scott Berinato, PC Week Online
03.23.98 6:15 pm ET
Voice services continue to dominate the networking conversation in 1998. Now two more representatives are joining the discourse.
Ascend Communications Inc. and ACT Networks Inc. are set to offer voice-over-IP and voice-over-ATM products to service providers, which in turn can offer companies alternative voice service at discount rates.
Ascend's voice/data architecture, to be announced next Monday, will be called MultiVoice IP and comprise ATM and frame relay products, said officials in Alameda, Calif.
The first product slated for release will be the MultiVoice IP Gateway for the MAX 4000 and 6000 access concentrators. The IP voice gateway will support 96 voice channels per MAX 6000 unit. Future versions will support 672 channels. On the 4000, the entire unit must be dedicated to VoIP through eight-, 12- and 16-port voice cards, officials said.
The MultiVoice Gateway for the MAX 6000 will cost between $677 and $750 per port. The software upgrade on the MAX 4000 will cost $3,000, with voice cards sold separately, officials said.
Another component of Ascend's voice strategy is MultiVoice Access Manager, which provides user authentication, telephone-number-to-IP address translation and other voice-network functions. It will cost $3,000 for a version supporting four MultiVoice Gateways, $15,000 for 32 gateways and $30,000 for 128 gateways, officials said.
Ascend will next turn its attention to voice-over-ATM hardware for its SA line of ATM switches. Field trials will begin next quarter, with hardware shipping in June, officials said.
The last phase of the strategy will integrate IP, frame relay and ATM voice/data equipment into a single, interoperable network. Ascend will also interface with the SS7 network at that time, which will bring advanced services such as voice mail, CallerID and 800-number recognition to data service providers. No date has been set for this final phase of the strategy.
Analyst Fran‡ois de Repentigny of Frost & Sullivan Inc., in San Francisco, said Ascend's service provider presence gives the company a captive audience eager to hear its story.
"The ability to make the voice products work with the switches in the network core [from Cascade Communications Inc.] would really appeal to network administrators," said de Repentigny. "One question, though, is how many providers have Ascend throughout their network? That kind of puts a damper on it, but nevertheless they have a solid strategy."
Large data networking companies aren't the only vendors with voice-over-IP offerings for carriers and enterprises.
ACT Networks Inc. today unveiled the first in a line of very dense IP telephony gateways called ServiceXchange. The family is mainly targeted at ISPs (Internet service providers) that want to offer corporate voice service.
"This is very eye-opening," said Abner Germanow, an analyst at International Data Corp., in Framingham, Mass. "It's a real good box to come out of a small company. I would expect ISPs to notice this."
Indeed, sources close to the company said carriers MCI Communications Corp. and Teleglobe Inc. are testing the products for possible deployment in their networks.
The first product, due in June, will be the SX-10, an entry-level gateway that offers four T-1 connections, or 96 voice channels, according to ACT officials in Camarillo, Calif.
From there, ACT will roll out a family of voice gateways based on an eight-port T-1 card. The SX-40 will provide 32 T-1s or 768 ports. The SX-120 puts 96 T-1s (2,304 ports) in a 19-inch rack. At the very high end, ACT will roll out the SX-600, which can support 480 T-1 lines, or 11,520 channels, in a 7-foot telco rack.
These products are due in the next 12 months, with the SX-120 slated for a fourth-quarter shipment. All of the products will cost about $350 per channel, which translates to about $33,000 for the entry-level SX-10, officials said.
All of the products will also support "any service on any port at any time." In other words, the ports will accept either voice or data traffic as it comes in. Some hardware thus far has had to be pre-configured to support either voice or data. |
