Internet Telephony Service Providers Get Smart
September 16, 1998 Inter@ctive Week via NewsEdge Corporation
: Even as providers of Internet Protocol
telephone services continue to grapple with
delivering toll-quality voice calls, some are
looking beyond the cut-rate call market to
offer advanced telecommunications services
to corporate customers. Many of those
services are linked to the growing use of
collaborative computing technology in
business applications.
One of the most aggressive of the so-called
Internet telephony service providers (ITSPs)
is I-Link Worldwide LLC (www.i-link.net),
which since its inception in early 1997 has
been pursuing a strategy based on
feature-rich packet telecommunications.
I-Link's early lead is due in part to its use of
proprietary technology along with the
evolving H.323 Internet Protocol (IP)
telephony standard, says Bob Bryson, vice
president of product marketing at I-Link. The
proprietary technology comes from two
wholly owned I-Link subsidiaries -- MiBridge
Inc. and ViaNet Technologies Ltd.
"The industry is evolving in the direction
we're going, but we can't wait for vendors to
mature products under the standards
process," Bryson says.
Like other ITSPs hoping to broaden their
appeal beyond the cost savings associated
with long-distance voice-over-IP, I-Link's
starting point for feature enhancement is to
incorporate elements of the switched public
network's Intelligent Network (IN)
architecture.
"We're getting the SS7 [Signaling System 7]
core code from other vendors, but we're
implementing IN using our own technology
inside our gateways," Bryson says.
I-Link serves about 35,000 customers in 25
markets and expects to reach 250,000
customers by the end of 1999 as it adds
features and functions to its service
portfolio, Bryson says. "We think price is a
starting point for us in building a market
base, but it's just the starting point," he
says.
Now And Later
I-Link's current feature set includes
integrated voice and fax service, " find- me"
calling, conferencing, enhanced e-mail and a
variety of custom calling options. I-Link
delivers these features using IP-based
functions built into its backbone, offering
customers lower-cost alternatives than are
typically available from incumbent service
providers via their IN-equipped circuit
switches.
I-Link's next big step is to extend network
functionality to the customer premises via
what the ITSP calls C4 -- a customer
communications control center device being
developed by ViaNet. I-Link expects to
deploy C4 in the second half of next year, in
conjunction with its use of Integrated
Services Digital Network (ISDN) and
Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL)
access lines.
Late last month, I-Link announced that
ViaNet had developed a working prototype of
C4 that will provide home and small-business
customers with up to 24 phone lines over
existing connections, depending on access
rates. The C4 will function as a private node
on I-Link's voice and data communications
network, which means that customers with a
C4 will own an intelligent segment of the
enhanced network, Bryson says. Those
customers will pay for a single connection on
a fixed-rate basis, with other service
charges incurred on an as-used basis.
I-Link will put the C4 at the customer
premises, breaking away from the remote
H.323 gateway model, in which calls go out
from users over analog circuits and are
translated to IP at a regional server. Many
other ITSPs are looking at similar approaches
to expanding their service venues using
technology soon to enter the market from
other vendors.
Already There
The idea of bringing the gateway to the
customer premises is an extension of what's
now going on at large businesses, where the
growing use of collaborative computing
within corporate local and wide area network
environments is extending out to public
network connectivity over virtual private
networks (VPNs). This trend is driving
companies to look at adding a voice and
videoconferencing component to the data
stream via implementation of H.323
technology.
Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Tactical Aircraft
Systems group has installed an H.323- based
system supplied by Lucent Technologies Inc.
(www. lucent.com) to support collaborative
efforts to design the Joint Strike Fighter jet
jointly commissioned by the U.S. Air Force,
Navy and Marines and the British Royal Navy.
With a need to coordinate development
among multiple vendors and customers here
and in the U.K., mixed-media conferencing is
essential to keep the project on track and
on schedule, says Richard Cox, virtual
enterprise coordinator at Lockheed Martin
(www.lmco.com).
"These companies share services and help
each other with design problems, so there's
a need for us to be a virtual company," Cox
says. "The old way -- using room-based
video teleconferencing -- is an expensive,
often time-constrained way to collaborate,
and it doesn't lend itself to impromptu
meetings."
Concentric Network Corp.
(www.concentric.net) was the first ITSP to
bring such capabilities into the public
networking domain. Last year, Concentric
launched a service that uses devices linking
the H.323 domain with packet conferencing
systems based on the older H.320 standard.
This service gives companies accustomed to
running conferencing systems over ISDN
lines separate from their local area network
(LAN) an opportunity to expand their
videoconferencing capabilities into the IP
domain, mixing video with white-boarding
and application sharing over data networks,
says Katie Greene, a Concentric
spokeswoman.
"We're one of the few service providers right
now that enable ISDN-based systems to talk
to the IP system," she says. Concentric uses
corporate T1 data links to its ATM
[Asyn-chronous Transfer Mode] backbone to
support high-end videoconferencing. "This is
really important to companies that have
invested a lot of money in H.320 technology
but that don't want to incur the costs and
inconvenience of using ISDN lines as they
expand their application base," Greene adds.
One of Concentric's first videoconferencing
customers is Bay Networks Inc.
(www.baynetworks.com), where about 500
staffers use the videoconferencing service
each day. Bay has found the Concentric
service to be "much more affordable" than its
earlier H.320-based ISDN system, E H says
Pierre Pellissier, network manager at Bay.
"The quality of IP video through the
Concentric network is better than any of our
other existing ISDN-based video systems,"
he adds.
Gateway Drivers
Demand for large-scale videoconferencing
products from large corporations and ITSPs
is driving equipment makers to expand the
capacity of their customer premises
H.323-to-H.320 gateway products. Lucent
will bring out a more scalable version of its
Multimedia Communications Exchange
(MMCX) server early next year, says Bryan
Katz, general manager of IP business
development at Lucent. The box is now
being tested by several service providers, he
says.
Lucent is working to make the MMCX, an
Internet call center with 500 ports, easier to
use with H.320 systems by simplifying
session management tasks, such as
allocating encoding algorithms for specific
users across the two conferencing domains,
Katz says. Simplified session management is
a key goal of standards development, as IP
telecommunications moves toward
endorsement of version 3 of H.323 early next
year.
Along with solutions for high-end customers,
vendors are moving to make H.323
conferencing and other features affordable
for small companies. "Even small companies
have sales forces out on the road and
branch offices in different locations," says
Donald Brown, president and chief executive
officer of Interactive Intelligence Inc.
(www.inter-intelli.com), a supplier of H.323
software. "There's a real need for
collaboration and conferencing, if they could
afford it."
Interactive Intelligence sells the Enterprise
Interaction Server, a Windows NT- based
communications system that unifies the
processing of telephony, fax, e- mail and
Internet interactions within the corporate
networking environment. A new H.323
gateway component links the internal and
external circuit networks with the corporate
LAN. The H.323 gateway lets companies set
up and manage conferences at very low
costs, Brown says.
Although Interactive Intelligence initially set
out to serve enterprises from a premises
networking perspective, the addition of the
H.323 gateway has opened an opportunity
for ITSPs to use the technology to deliver
public network services, Brown says. "We
didn't start out planning to supply service
providers, but CLECs [competitive local
exchange carriers] began coming to us for
low-cost solutions supporting integrated
messaging services," he says. "Now they're
interested in the conferencing component of
our technology, as well."
Into The Public Space
Other H.323 vendors report a migration of
their products into public networking
applications. White Pine Software Inc.
(www.wpine.com), which supplies H.323
systems compatible with a range of server
platforms, now has beta trials under way
with a number of ITSPs and Internet service
providers (ISPs), including America Online
Inc. (www. aol.com), Concentric, the data
operation arm of Time Warner Cable
(www.timewarnercable.com) and WorldCom
Inc.'s UUnet Technologies Inc.
(www.uunet.com), according to Forrest
Milkowski, co-founder of White Pine.
"As private companies explore the use of
collaborative computing with conferencing,
ISPs are saying: 'You're already buying
service from us, so let us supply you with
conferencing services along with your VPN,' "
Milkowski says.
White Pine has developed several products
that make conferencing and other IP
telephony feature applications manageable
over multiple access environments, Milkowski
says. Its MeetingPoint software, which
works with any H.323-compliant client,
supports audio switching, in which a
document referred to by a speaker -- and
also the person's image if video is involved --
is displayed automatically on the screens of
conference participants. MeetingPoint can
manage bandwidth allocations to fit the
access speeds of individual users, Milkowski
adds.
These are precisely the features that
Networks On-Line Inc. (www. nol.net), an
ITSP subsidiary of Comtech Consolidation
Group Inc., needs to take its service
capabilities beyond the realm of low-cost
long-distance service, says NOL Executive
Vice President Donald Brown (not to be
confused with Donald Brown at Interactive
Intelligence). "Our plan of attack has always
been to offer voice, videoconferencing,
faxing and other features as part of the
package, " NOL's Brown says. "Now we can
do that."
NOL, which operates five points of presence
in an area that covers a diameter of roughly
400 miles in Houston, uses the White Pine
software to offer H.323 services running
over ISDN to residential and business
customers. At 128 kilobits per second, ISDN
can deliver H.323 video feeds at resolution
and frame rates that overcome the
drawbacks of conferencing over analog
dial-up lines, NOL's Brown says.
Along with providing users a turnkey
conferencing service that includes
installation of gateway equipment at the
customer premises, NOL offers a " virtual
conference room" service at a rental rate of
$5 per hour, which allows anyone to set up a
meeting with multiple users.
The White Pine software supports
simultaneous on-screen appearance of as
many as 10 videoconference participants,
although at 128 Kbps, that number of video
streams results in poor-quality displays.
The service, launched in July, already has
shown market strength, Brown says. "We're
seeing more than tire kickers," he says.
"We're seeing people willing to pay for
services."
NOL is a partner in the global IP telephony
consortium run by Gric Communications Inc.
(www.gric. com). Brown expects many of
the ITSPs in that consortium to move to the
same types of services. In fact, Gric appears
to be on the verge of implementing a
consortiumwide videoconferencing system,
probably using a different system from the
one used by NOL, Brown says.
The ability to offer such advanced services,
coupled with the opening of bandwidth over
ISDN, ADSL and cable pipes, could make a
big difference in the marketing of IP
telephony services to the business market,
says Dennis Murphy, vice president of
enterprise technology at The Goldman Sachs
Group LP (www.gs. com). In the past,
Goldman Sachs has gone so far as to buy
proprietary videoconference systems for
clients so that its brokers can "be in front of
them as often as possible," Murphy says.
The low cost of offering such connections
over H.323 systems will greatly expand the
marketing advantage, he adds.
"The highlight of H.323 has been the addition
of H.263, the video algorithm," Murphy says,
adding there's "a real killer of a difference"
between the performance of H.263 and older
video-over-circuit-switched systems.
Eventually, high-speed access links will make
the video component even more compelling
for companies such as Goldman Sachs,
Murphy says. "What you need to have is
virtual meeting rooms, whether you're in the
airport with your laptop, at the office or in
the conference room, without having to
wonder whether everything will work," he
says.
<<Inter@ctive Week -- 09-14-98>> |
