IP voice readies for next step: Partnerships, billing, interoperability dominate VON show

When leaders of the Internet protocol voice market gathered at the Voice on the Net show last week in Washington, there was a sense of anticipation that the industry was ready to fulfill the wild predictions analysts had assigned it.

However, without resolving some of the more difficult technical issues such as interoperability and billing, several attendees and speakers said the technology would become a '90s version of ISDN-filled with promise but stuck in limbo.

Delivering on the first problem, Lucent Technologies and VocalTec demonstrated the first multivendor H.323 gateway interoperability by running voice calls between their respective booths, over the Internet and through ITXC's network. In November, the companies will publish guidelines that detail the interoperability testing and begin shipping interoperable gateways, said David Levine, director of marketing and communications for VocalTec. "There may be some minor modifications, but this is really out," he said.

The billing issue could prove a little more difficult. Portal Software unveiled a new system that lets IP voice carriers manage and bill voice as they do for any other service. Infranet IPT includes support for various pricing plans including prepaid calling cards, zone-based pricing and time of day. Just as important, the company is pushing the idea of using billing as a competitive edge by giving end users access to billing records and eliminating the use of batch processing common in the telco environment.

"Price competition is going to be too fierce, and we think you can't do batch billing," said Bassam Khan, principal product manager of Portal.

In other show news, U S West !nterprise said it would deliver one of its first IP voice-oriented services using equipment from eFusion. Online Call Manager gives users with a single line three options of how to manage incoming calls while Web surfing: taking the call using voice-over-IP technology, sending the call to voice mail or sending the call to a different phone number.

!nterprise, which will charge $8 a month for the service, also will wholesale Online Call Manager to Internet service providers operating in its territory. The service will roll out in Omaha and the Minneapolis/St. Paul markets by the end of the year and expand to 18 more cities next year. The company also plans to bundle the service with voice mail.

"This is going to be a great boost for call management products," said Troy Alvarez, manager of new product development for !nterprise's IP multimedia services group.

Several analysts, though, cautioned that while advances are being made and hype is high, IP telephony still has a way to go.