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IP Telephony Services Aim for Respectability

IP telephony services work to match the quality of traditional phone and fax methods.

By Eric Brown, PCWorld   

Internet-protocol telephony has become an inexpensive way for companies to transmit voice and fax calls overseas and between branch offices. But IP telephony's current exemption from long-distance tariffs won't last forever. To compete over the long term, voice-over-IP services must deliver messaging services that meet or beat those available on traditional circuit-switched networks.

Brooktrout Technology is in the middle of the fray and its OEM partners have begun to show new IP services based on Brooktrout's TR2001 Series IP Telephony Universal Port platform. For example, Nortel is demonstrating a Brooktrout-based Internet Call Waiting service aimed at ISPs and their customers. If a phone call arrives while you're surfing the Web, a message appears on screen, giving you a choice of taking the call or sending it to a voice mail system. Also, Web sites with Nortel's Internet Voice Button will let you quickly switch to a voice call--handy if you can't find answers on a company's site and want to speak with a representative.

Corporate fax gateways also are likely to benefit from IP's ability to compress digital calls without the loss of quality that has characterized IP voice calls. Earlier this year, Brooktrout introduced real-time IP fax technology, now available in Voice & Data Systems' iService RealFax system. Voice & Data also released iService RealMessage, a universal messaging system that can store and forward voice and fax messages. Likewise, Inter-Tel's VocalNet IP telephony gateway now incorporates Brooktrout IP fax boards; and InVade is showing an IP-based wireless LAN that uses the Brooktrout technology.

While some of these applications have been available on other platforms, the widespread adoption of IP and the tight integration with mainstream Internet technology means faster development time and cheaper implementation, maintains Brooktrout IP marketing manager Josh Adelson: "The neat thing about IP is that everybody has IP coming to their desktop and everybody has a browser."

The industry focus on IP should encourage a variety of new applications, from multimedia conferencing to Caller ID sales programs--almost all of which are being built on the H.323 videoconferencing standard, giving IP vendors a leg up on the high-bandwidth future of integrated video services. RADVision, a leading vendor of H.323 protocol stacks, gateways, and other conferencing systems, is finding up to 80 percent of its new customers among IP telephony vendors, as opposed to their traditional videoconferencing clients.

It could take several years, however, before IP gateways approach the level of sophistication offered by PBX vendors, says George Kloak, RadVision's vice president for sales, who points out that the current version of H.323 supports only two PBX functions--call forward and transfer--while a traditional PBX offers 160 features.

The lack of call-management support is just one reason some IP telephony vendors plan to part ways with H.323 in favor of emerging IP voice standards such as Internet Protocol Device Control and Simple Gateway Control Protocol, both of which are being pushed by Nortel and Cisco.

Despite a looming standards battle, IP telephony is on a roll, says Ken Landoline, an analyst at Giga Information Group in Santa Clara, California.

"AT&T, MCI, and Sprint are all doing market trials in voice-over-IP, and it's an even hotter issue overseas where the tariffs are higher," he explains. "In the past 18 months, voice quality has improved. It's not ready for the public Internet, but over an intranet where you have control, it's certainly a viable way to save some money on long distance."