Making the private public

Ericsson announced it will roll out a new low-cost system for simultaneous voice and Internet access using standard telephone lines at the end of the year.

The first major contract for Ericsson's Public Intranet Service Network is with Swedish network operator Telia.

"Our purpose is to offer multimedia services to the Nordic market at an early stage. We see a rapidly growing interest for on-demand services as well as push services capable of handling video as well as traditional data communication and voice services," said Stig Person, Telia's business manager of broadband and multimedia.

The intranet is part of Ericsson's new line of service products that combine Internet and telecommunications technologies. It will enable Telia to provide high-quality multimedia and business-class intranet services on top of its broadband asynchronous transfer mode network, said Lars Lundgren, Ericsson's product manager of public intranet, for business unit datacom networks and Internet protocol (IP) services.

"The big part of this is the software," Lundgren said. "It recognizes IP addresses. The platform enables users to add billing functions and user groups to a public network."

Ericsson expects to offer the product in the U.S. sometime in 1998, Lundgren said.

Ericsson's intranet includes telecom features such as high-quality multimedia communications built on the H.323 standard. The Ericsson product will allow videoconferencing as well as data transmission over the Internet.

Ericsson's intranet builds on standard Internet technologies to enable the use of all standard applications, and includes advanced security components.

Security is provided via smart card authentication and public key infrastructure. This will enable an Internet service provider to offer virtual intranets to companies at a lower cost because customers share network and server resources rather than buying network equipment and servers themselves.