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Technology Stocks : Voice-on-the-net (VON), VoIP, Internet (IP) Telephony -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Stephen B. Temple who wrote (1815)	11/10/1998 7:57:00 AM
From: Stephen B. Temple	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 3178

Cisco Announces Carrier-Class Solution for Enhanced Voice Services in New World November 10, 1998 SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE) VCO/4K SwitchBrings Enhanced Voice Services to AccessPath-VS3 Cisco Systems, Inc. today announced availability of the VCO/4K open programmable switch as an option for the Cisco AccessPath-VS3 (AP-VS3) carrier-class VoIP platform. The combined AP-VS3 and VCO/4K solution provides both emerging and established carriers with an efficient and cost-effective way to deliver a broad range of value-added voice services today, as well as support for mixed-environment networks. This news comes just days after Cisco completed its acquisition of Summa Four, the company that developed the VCO/4K switch. The AP-VS3 is a fully integrated dial access system that enables quick deployment of toll quality voice and fax services over IP networks. The redundancy and hot-swappability features of the VCO/4K enhance the already high availability figures of the carrier-class AP-VS3. The open telephony architecture of the VCO/4K has allowed over 50 industry leading software developers to create a broad selection of applications such as pre- and post-paid calling card, voice/fax messaging, single-number service, voice-activated dialing, and web-initiated conferencing. The variety of available applications makes rapid deployment of enhanced voice services possible because carriers are not required to wait for proprietary solutions developed by traditional switching vendors. "The AP-VS3 with VCO/4K switching option will allow us to extend our offering of enhanced services, including pre-paid service and unified messaging to VoIP networks," said Kobi Alexander, Chairman, CEO and President at Comverse Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: CMVT). "The higher capacity and cost savings associated with the VCO/4K will enable our customers to swiftly respond to changing market needs and deploy additional services, on both circuit- and packet-based telephony networks." Comverse Technology is a world-leading supplier of enhanced services platforms to network operators. As a mixed environment gateway, the AP-VS3 with programmable switching option enables Cisco customers to realize cost savings from least-cost routing between circuit and packet networks. Incoming calls to destinations that are not served by the packet-telephony network can be directly routed to the PSTN without occupying valuable DSP resources of the AccessPath-VS3. Ofer Gneezy, president and CEO of VIP Calling said, "As part of the end-to-end Cisco solution we are deploying in The VIP Calling Network(TM), the combined AP-VS3 and VCO/4K solution will enable us to more rapidly integrate and expand toll-quality packet telephony services on our network. The compliance of the VCO/4K and the AP-VS3 with a broad range of international telecommunications variants is key to the successful integration of the combined solution in The VIP Calling Network." VIP Calling is the leading wholesale provider of international Internet telephony services. "Cisco's VOIP solution with integrated programmable switching allows nimble, market-oriented players like One.Tel to compete with larger circuit-switch carriers because it enables us to deploy new voice services faster and at a more competitive price," said Jodee Rich, Joint Managing Director, One.Tel Limited, an emerging carrier and new generation telephone company in Australia. Key Features of the Access Path VS3 and the VCO/4K The Cisco AccessPath-VS3 is the industry's first fully integrated dial access system that merges universal VoIP access, industry-leading switching and high-speed back-haul routing capabilities into a single, scalable architecture. The VCO/4K is a fully redundant platform that scales from 24 to 4,088 ports, representing a new standard of density for open programmable switching platforms. It offers a broad array of integrated application creation and management software tools, and complies with worldwide telco standards. Availability The VCO/4K open programmable switch is available now as an option for the Cisco AP-VS3 platform.

To: Stephen B. Temple who wrote (1815)	11/10/1998 8:14:00 AM
From: Stephen B. Temple	Respond to of 3178

OT> Is there hope for digital subscriber line technology? November 10, 1998 Network World As a columnist for a technical publication, I am presented with a surfeit of opportunities to speak to marketing droids from companies that claim to have answers to questions I didn't even know I had. (A disclosure: I do try to arrange some of the visits for lunch time so I can at least get a few free meals out of the encounters.) From time to time, these meetings actually result in useful information. One such meeting took place two weeks ago when Rick Gilbert , CEO of digital subscriber line (DSL) equipment vendor Copper Mountain, came by. (Unfortunately, the only time that worked was early morning, so no free lunch.) I've been hearing horror stories for the past few years about the problems encountered when ISPs and other companies attempt to deploy various types of DSL connections to their customers. Particular problems have included difficulty in getting wires from the phone company that are clean enough to provide good performance and potentially severe cross talk that results from having more than one DSL link in the same cable bundle running down the street. I've also heard tell of significant distance limitations. Of course, the most severe challenge to DSL's future is that in general it is a technology empowered by the aggressive, innovative environment common among telephone companies. Not! DSL is seen by these companies as a technology for providing mixed voice and data services over the same line. As a result, the version of DSL they are working on uses ATM to multiplex the services and is tightly tied to the voice world. In addition, the same people in the telephone companies who brought you ISDN are involved in bringing you DSL. Now there's a potentially fatal burden if there ever was one. There seem to be dozens of DSL flavors, and not all of them have the same set of issues. ISDN DSL (IDSL) and Symmetric DSL (SDSL), t he types of DSL that Copper Mountain and others are promoting, use the same on-the-wire technology (2B1Q) that ISDN uses. This means, among other things, that the cross talk problems that plague some types of DSL are not a significant issue. The ability to run at a reasonable speed - 128K bit/sec over 22,000 feet of wire and faster over shorter cable runs - means far better coverage than DSL versions that have shorter limits. Over 99% of all customers are within 22,000 feet of a phone central office, and this percentage drops to less than 50% for 12,000 fe et. But the thing that seems most promising about the Copper Mountain approach is that the company sees this as a data service and not some mixed-media service. Copper Mountain is dealing with ISPs, not telephone companies, and uses frame-based transport rather than A TM. Frame-based is less expensive and less complex to deal with than ATM. DSL deployment numbers are still small, far smaller than cable modem deployment numbers, for example. But developments such as those taking place at Copper Mountain and perhaps the DSL-lite technology under development by Microsoft and others, may mean that DSL will have a better future than it has a present. Disclaimer: Harvard has a long history of dealing with the future but has no opinion on DSL technology. Bradner is a consultant with Harvard University's University Information Systems. He can be reached at sob@harvard.edu. <<Network World -- 11-09-98, p. 41>> [Copyright 1998, Network World]