A flurry of IP innovations: Motorola, NetSpeak partner; PSINet taps Wang Global

The latest sign that voice-over-IP telephony is the telecom flavor of the month is a raft of vendor announcements aimed at tapping into markets of all sizes-from service providers to consumers.

In the most sweeping of these announcements, Motorola will partner with NetSpeak, the gatekeeper software company, in a three-phase development deal that will combine Motorola's Vanguard network access product line with NetSpeak software to provide integrated, interoperable IP voice products.

"Right now, Motorola is the world market's leading vendor of packet voice equipment, with 70,000 voice ports deployed globally," said Sean Parham, the company's director of Internet product operations. "With NetSpeak we're bringing a best-in-class software platform with that best-in-class hardware to allow the two to work together seamlessly in a customer's network."

The first stage of the alliance has produced an integrated product already in test-a combination of the Vanguard network access device and NetSpeak's Connection Server. The latter provides call routing, address translation and other centralized call management capabilities. The second stage, to come later this year, will incorporate existing NetSpeak gatekeeper functions such as subscriber account management, which provides authorization services for debit cards, credit cards and billing functions.

Finally, the companies expect to produce a line of Motorola access devices based on a new and open NetSpeak platform now under development. The platform will allow customers to provide a host of traditional telephony services-call forwarding and transfer, multiple party calling and 411, 911 and 611 services, for example-in a voice-over-IP environment.

"We want to ride above the standards level," said Robert Kennedy, NetSpeak president and COO. "This new platform will interface with existing NetSpeak applications and some third-party applications in a multiple-protocol environment." Products in this third phase should come to market by June 1999.

Meanwhile, PSINet is partnering with Wang Global in a global rollout of PSIVoice, the IP telephony service PSINet introduced in July. Wang Global will assist with planning, installation and support of PSIVoice for current PSINet small and medium-sized business customers. All traffic will be carried over PSINet's IP-optimized network, which consists of more than 500 points of presence around the world.

Finally, Big Planet, a network of independent marketers of Internet technology to consumers and small business, has announced it will include Aplio/Phone as part of its product offerings. Aplio/Phone is a stand-alone appliance for IP telephony designed for customers who make frequent calls to the same location. It connects to a standard phone that the caller uses to dial up an Internet access service. Calls are routed over the Internet to an Aplio/Phone at the other end.