IP telephony's next step

Last week's CTI Expo in Baltimore provided a glimpse at Internet protocol telephony's future, with several vendors lining up agreements to attack the corporate IP voice market. One carrier, FNet Corp., also used the show to announce its first foreign partnership.

That deal, with LibertyOne, will give FNet an IP voice service in Australia and New Zealand. LibertyOne, an Australian Internet service provider, will be FNet's sales and marketing agent, responsible for customer support.

"I don't want to go into an agreement with one of the big guys," said FNet CEO Jim Magruder. "We're not necessarily looking at U.S.-to-country traffic. We're looking at country-to-country traffic."

FNet already has deployed five gateways in the United Kingdom and plans to deploy at least three in the U.S.

Vendors at the show, however, kept their eye on applications that go well beyond international voice services. EFusion Inc. said it formed a strategic alliance to provide IP telephony applications with 3Com. The deal, which is the second for eFusion with a major networking provider, will bring together eFusion's IP telephony software with 3Com's Total Control remote access concentrators.

"This in our view reduces some barriers to entry," said Buzz Schadel, vice president of corporate marketing. "We don't have to wait for the Internet telephony infrastructure to develop."

A joint product is expected to be available in the fourth quarter.

In a separate announcement, NetPhone has signed an agreement with IBM under which IBM will offer NetPhone's PBX technology as part of its small business computer telephony solution. The deal combines NetPhone's telephony-switching adapter card with IBM's call control and voice mail software.

The objective is to expand capabilities that traditionally were associated with call centers to a wider audience, said Mike Katz, vice president of marketing for NetPhone.

The next level will combine the IP telephony market with the computer telephony integration and communications server market, he said.

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