Ericsson announces H.323 gatekeeper

Ericsson said it has evaluation versions of the industry's first carrier-grade Internet protocol telephony gatekeeper thatcomplies with the emerging H.323 standard.

The Ericsson H.323 Gatekeeper System is designed to tie together dissimilar vendors' IP/ public network gateways and includes some of the intelligence and management capabilities that will be used to develop new applications.

Telenor Nextel, a Norwegian carrier that plans to deploy IP voice using Ericsson's equipment, became the first to publicly test the system during last month's Voice on the Net Europe show. That system was based on a Unix platform, while the first commercial version will be available on Windows NT or Solaris platforms. The software, however, is written in Java to allow for portability, said Barbara Boyle, marketing manager for Ericsson.

The availability of the gatekeeper is significant because it represents the first phase of multivendor gateway interoperability, she added. "It's the first step at connecting all vendors so we have a workable system," she said.

In the current environment, calls from one IP voice user to another must hop between gateways over the public switched network if different vendors make those gateways.

"I would see this as an enhancement to the growth prospects, which are already pretty aggressive," said Robert Goodwin, senior vice president with Killen & Associates. "Clearly, the more gatekeepers you have out there, the faster the use of the IP telephony option goes. This probably indicates cut-throat competition between the vendors."

Like most manufacturers, Ericsson will use applications to differentiate its gatekeeper, particularly for applications that are better-suited to reside inside the carrier network, said Boyle. For others, the company will publish an open application programming interface (API) to its gateways. "It depends on the application and where the API would be best suited," she said.