Lucent joins ranks of migratory IP architectures

"We’re delivering an IP-centric solution where the end user would see an IP phone that plugs into a LAN as opposed to a telephony port," said Michael Meyers, Lucent’s North American 7RE product management director. This provides "a phone that they can move within or outside the building," which is especially important to service providers accommodating customers with work-at-home employees.

"The (workers) can take their IP phone home and plug it in and access the corporate LAN through the remote access, like e-voice over ADSL or a cable modem that has enough bandwidth to handle the uncompressed voice," he said.

Or, they can carry the phone on a road trip.

"Hotels generally don’t have a place to plug in an IP phone, but they have a place to plug in a computer and we have a version of the IP phone that’s a client on a PC. In that case, you could use your PC," he said.

Either way, he said, the technology allows service providers to use existing Centrex switches and switch features, but deliver IP phones and soft features to end users. In each instance, he emphasized, the call signaling is secured by a Lucent firewall.

"We sometimes call this a first step, but it’s a good transitional step in that it both preserves existing investment and also provides something new," Meyers said.

Lucent’s technology is aimed at the usual suspects – Incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs)--and it has already enlisted SBC Communications as part of Lucent’s Lisle, IL, facility trial where there are "441 users on this service, Lucent employees not from the business unit that developed this," he said. "It’s provided by Lucent Telecommunications in conjunction with SBC. For those people, it’s a real system; for SBC, it’s a service trail in the sense it’s the first offering of this new service."
Jim Barthold is Senior Editor at Telephony. He can be reached at jim_barthold@intertec.com.