CTIA: D2 targets Android for unified communications

LAS VEGAS--Embedded telephony software maker D2 Technologies today demonstrated its new IP-based communications suite working alongside the Android mobile operating system, enabling phones running Google’s emerging platform to deliver an array of IP-based services.

D2’s core business is providing embedded IP telephony stack software to makers of chips, network infrastructure and end devices. Its software today helps process billions of minutes of IP communications per month.

In recent months, D2 has been pushing in a new direction with its mCUE converged communications client, which enables mobile handsets to serve as full-scale unified communications devices. mCUE capabilities include enabling fixed/mobile convergence on dual-mode (GSM/WiFi) phones and an array of UC-style features including IP-PBX call control, presence, corporate directory access, support for multiple IM systems, peer-to-peer VoIP and more.

In addition to providing support for various IP-based services including SIP, Google Talk, Yahoo, MSN and others, mCUE includes what D2 calls a “communications user interface” that provides the phone-based UI for users to access those services via the mobile phone.

This week at CTIA, D2 discussed plans to integrate mCUE with the Android OS. It demonstrated the mCUE client stack working with the Android emulator and – with a bit of work – plans to make it work with the full Android platform when Google makes the OS available in the second half of this year, said Doug Makishima, D2’s vice president of marketing and sales.

“The mobile industry is looking increasingly like the PC industry,” Makishima said. “You’ve got unlocked handsets, no-plan handsets. But there’s a software gap. There are some mobile UC clients from PBX vendors. And while OSes like Android and Windows Mobile provide a full user interface, there’s little in the way of an IP or unified communications middleware framework for mobile.”

To rectify that, D2 is following the same technology trends as in the VoIP market, driving a core stack of IP and UC protocols down to the embedded chip level to improve performance and make telephony resources available as a hardware-level resource.

By combining D2’s mCUE software and Google’s Android software development kit, carriers and OEMs can develop new devices that will be particularly suited for emerging networks supporting open devices, open applications and open application development styles, Makishima said.

Because the open source Linux and Android development communities have done “surprisingly little work” integrating IP telephony protocols, he said, D2’s mCUE stack sits nicely alongside the core software components of Android.

One key piece of D2’s technology is an abstraction layer, which it calls Internet Service Interface (ISI) , that makes it easy for application developers to access mCUE’s IP-based protocols. D2 is considering contributing ISI to the Android project, Makishima said.

D2 sees a variety of ways that a device running Android/mCUE could get to market, including via enterprise IP phone vendors, mobile operators wanting to deliver dual-mode UC experiences to both enterprises and consumers and via mobile phone makers that want to offer devices through retail channels that can run on tomorrow’s open-device networks, Makishima said.