Two articles, one about wireless (did someone say eye in the sky?) and the other, well... read on.
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SYMBOL AND CISCO ENTER WIRELESS LAN
TELEPHONY ALLIANCE
March 24, 1998
TELECOMWORLDWIRE via NewsEdge Corporation :
Symbol Technologies and Cisco Systems have entered
into a partnership to launch a complete wireless local
area network telephone system based on Voice-Over-IP
technology. The system will use Symbol's NetVision
wireless telephone handset and Spectrum24 wireless
LAN infrastructure together with Cisco's 3600 voice/fax
module to enable users to place or receive calls to
wireless handsets or PC- based telephones at their own
or other sites worldwide over an internal TCP/IP
network.
Ascend, ACT jump on VOIP
hardware bandwagon
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.
Ascend is at www.ascen.com. ACT can be reached at www.acti.com.
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