IP voice moves beyond arbitrage

If the next 12 months in the Internet protocol telephony market are supposed to be dedicated to developing applications beyond cheap long-distance minutes, one of the first potential candidates is raising its hand. VocalData, a 3-year-old start-up, will demonstrate at this week's Voice on the Net show in Las Vegas what it claims is the industry's first IP local exchange system.

The carrier version of the IP*Star system combines the functionality of Centrex and an IP-PBX. The system consists of network-based telephony server software, a unified messaging package and Ethernet-IP telephones, which the company eventually will buy from third parties.

Key to the architecture is the software, which provides PBX-like features. Initially, the company has developed three versions (14-, 21- or 37-button) of an Ethernet-IP phone that plugs directly into a customer's LAN, converting voice to IP at the desktop.

"Our idea is to create an architecture that lets service providers add functionality," said William Rich, president and CEO of VocalData. "We ultimately see ourselves as a software company writing applications for the packet network."

As part of that effort, the company also is championing a new protocol, open application telephony specification (OATS), which will push new applications through the development stage faster. OATS most closely resembles Microsoft's telephony application programming interface protocol that many developers currently are working with, said Steve Bacci, chief technology officer and co-founder of VocalData.

"We've taken a pretty monolithic problem and made it easy to add functionality," he said. "Being protocol-based, it means you can write in any language."

Aimed at the competitive local exchange carrier and Internet service provider markets, IP*Star's telephony server software operates on a single pair of Unix servers and can support up to 10,000 users.

But cracking that market will mean going up against big competitors such as Cisco Systems, which late last year acquired Selsius Systems, another vendor pushing the IP-Ethernet phone concept. At the same time, VocalData, as well as the whole industry, must battle the perception that IP voice lacks quality.

"If VocalData can get a handset with 100% reliability and something that looks similar to what corporate users have today I don't see the handset as being an issue," said Meredith Rosenberg, program manager with The Yankee Group. "Now competing against bigger companies like Cisco, they might have an issue going up against companies like that. But the main thing is to make sure the reliability is there."