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Technology Stocks : Ascend Communications (ASND) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ricky who wrote (50636)	7/29/1998 3:57:00 PM
From: Mysore Han	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 61433

ASND SRA voice/data n/w integration?? You guys figure it out.... Stratus Builds Bridges Between Voice, Data March 27, 1998 Inter@ctive Week via NewsEdge Corporation : Sketchy and preliminary plans of remote access equipment makers to integrate their hardware with the switches and intelligent services found in the voice world began to show signs last week of solidifying into a cohesive strategy. Emerging as the primary architect of the planned amalgamation of the voice and data networks is Stratus Computer Inc., a $688 million company that reported it is working with remote access equipment makers and Internet service providers to put into place a four-phase plan for bridging the voice and data worlds. Stratus (www.stratus.com) officials said they are working with 3Com Corp. (www.3com.com), Ascend Communications Inc. (www.ascend. com), Bay Networks Inc. (www. baynetworks.com), Cisco Systems Inc. (www.cisco.com) and long-distance carrier MCI Communications Corp. (www.mci. com) to create a standard gateway device that will enable dial-up access equipment to tap into call routing and other intelligent features of the voice network, including advanced services such as call forwarding and call portability. "Stratus is well-positioned to help the data carriers provide the seamless integration [between the voice and data networks]," said Lisa Allocca, an analyst at research company Renaissance Worldwide Inc. han:/software/switch/obj/iop5/nsar/onsar cat /tmp/t Stratus Builds Bridges Between Voice, Data March 27, 1998 Inter@ctive Week via NewsEdge Corporation : Sketchy and preliminary plans of remote access equipment makers to integrate their hardware with the switches and intelligent services found in the voice world began to show signs last week of solidifying into a cohesive strategy. Emerging as the primary architect of the planned amalgamation of the voice and data networks is Stratus Computer Inc., a $688 million company that reported it is working with remote access equipment makers and Internet service providers to put into place a four-phase plan for bridging the voice and data worlds. Stratus (www.stratus.com) officials said they are working with 3Com Corp. (www.3com.com), Ascend Communications Inc. (www.ascend. com), Bay Networks Inc. (www. baynetworks.com), Cisco Systems Inc. (www.cisco.com) and long-distance carrier MCI Communications Corp. (www.mci. com) to create a standard gateway device that will enable dial-up access equipment to tap into call routing and other intelligent features of the voice network, including advanced services such as call forwarding and call portability. "Stratus is well-positioned to help the data carriers provide the seamless integration [between the voice and data networks]," said Lisa Allocca, an analyst at research company Renaissance Worldwide Inc. Stratus appears to possess the credentials for bridging the currently discrete worlds, Allocca said, because the company manufactures both the hardware and software that carry the call control system, known as Signaling System 7 (SS7), which provides intelligent call forwarding services to the voice world. SS7 is, essentially, a data network that runs parallel to the network of switches that carry voice traffic over the public switched telephone network. The SS7 network is made up of databases that contain call routing information, making it possible, for example, for a telephone switch to route a call to a secondary phone number if the primary number is unavailable, said Rod Randall, vice president of marketing at Stratus. The first phase of Stratus' plan is to help the telephone carriers off-load data traffic from their voice switches, which were designed to handle calls of a duration between two and three minutes, by supplying a gateway that routes data calls directly to a service provider's remote access equipment. During the second phase, Stratus will provide equipment that will enable service providers to tap into the call routing features that are now part of the voice network. Through a device known as a Service Control Point, data calls could be assigned priority treatment or automatically routed to another point of presence if all ports at the service provider's local access network are tied up, Randall added. The first two phases of the plan will be rolled out later this year. Timing will be determined by the hardware partners. The final two phases involve migrating voice calls to the Internet and then adding intelligent forwarding features, such as call forwarding, Randall said. <<Inter@ctive Week -- 03-23-98>> [Copyright 1998, Ziff Wire]