Mapletree penetrates Chinese IP phone market

Without a huge legacy infrastructure, the Chinese telecommunications market is eager to adopt technologies that will migrate to voice-over-IP/ATM, Mapletree Networks has learned.

HandyInfo Technologies will use the multi-service, network infrastructure OEM vendor’s technology for a multi-phase project with China Telecom to roll out IT phone service and, eventually, expand into VoIP/VoATM.

“In Asia, they’re in a quantum leap,” said Brian McCormack, a Mapletree senior product manager. “It’s almost like, ‘Why worry about some of the older technologies? Let’s go out there and get the biggest and best technology now.’”

HandyInfo will use Mapletree’s UniPorte architecture that offloads voice and data from the PSTN onto packet-switched networks--either IP or ATM--and lets carriers rapidly transition into next-generation services. It will give China Telecom a migratory path from traditional Class 5 switches to packet-based technologies.

“HandyInfo is developing an IP phone that, beside voice, will also have a small screen where I can look at short paging messages,” McCormack explained. “Instead of looking at a big Yellow Page book, I can actually go on there and look at commercials or ads, locations, things like that. I can also get small e-mail messages.”

Mapletree is building the key components that HandyInfo will use to move China Telecom from switches to packets, McCormack said.

“They (HandyInfo) needed remote-access modem termination to get these particular services,” he said “We are front-ending lots of different Web servers for Yellow Page information or e-mail., Once they get this up and going, they’re looking at adding new services which China Telecom can then sell to their customers and also migrate into voice over IP.”

There is an explosion of computers and Web-based connectivity occurring in China, and the packet networks are cheaper to build and easier to structure to handle the increased demands for dial-up connectivity, McCormack said. From there, those networks can be moved into voice services.

“They start off with the data and then move over into the voice,” McCormack said. “With our technology, they can put in a number of different platforms, but they can start off with data and have the ability to move up and do voice over IP.”