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Mediatrix Telecom

Founded in 1997 and headquartered in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada, Mediatrix (www.mediatrix.com) develops VoIP access devices, gateways and associated software targeting all segments of the telecom/IT market. Their VoIP focus is on solutions at the network edge that enable the convergence of voice traffic onto an all-IP network.

Internet Telephony (News - Alert) magazine recently talked with Mediatrix’ President and COO, Serge Beaudoin. Having begun his career more than 15 years ago as a software communications protocol designer for the Societé de Micro d’ectronique Industrielle de Sherbrooke (SMIS), his career has since encompassed many operations and engineering assignments, including various leadership positions at SMIS, C-MAC and Mediatrix Telecom (News - Alert). He has served as director of the hardware and low-level software team of Mediatrix as well as General Manager for M5T. In fact, Beaudoin was instrumental in establishing the VoIP hardware and software development team of Mediatrix.




ITMag: Will VoIP Peering (News - Alert) eventually disrupt the gateway market?

Beaudoin: The first question is: who can make money out of VoIP Peering? With the downturn experienced last year with regards to Skype, the Vonage slowdown and the SunRocket (News - Alert) story, the market value of VoIP Peering can be discussed only for a while.

The other question is: will VoIP peering find some room in the enterprise marketplace?

How can you ensure control and security in this world? Security and a certain form of control are paramount. Do I want my business or personal communication system to look like my email inbox with all the SPAM? What about SPIT? Will the large players open their network to the smaller independent ones controlling significant square miles?

When VoIP Peering will arise, it will drive down the demand for high density gateways. Since Mediatrix focuses on low to mid density enterprise premise gateways, VoIP Peering is (and will be) providing some momentum to our sales. Even with VoIP Peering at the service provider level, enterprises want to be able to keep local PSTN access and to interconnect with their legacy PBX (News - Alert). With the IMS system now starting to be deployed to carriers also looking after the enterprise market, we see an increasing demand for gateways. We have also seen the traction of cable operators in telephony in the residential market and the next step is toward the enterprise market.

On the short to mid term, VoIP Peering will also drive the needs for Enterprise hosted Session Border Controller, one of the many features of Multi Service Business Gateways (MSBG), our next flagship.

ITMag: What is your vision for Mediatrix and how is the company positioned in the next-generation telecom market?

Beaudoin: Our positioning in the next-generation telecom market is looking pretty good, more and more of the large players are beginning to offer a complete and reliable service not only for the residential market but also to the enterprise segment, where Mediatrix is also bringing a complete portfolio and valuable expertise. Those players are not only talking about combining the fixed and mobile infrastructure with IMS but they now also consider replacing the traditional PSTN. In such transitioning, intelligent gateways are bringing to the enterprise and customer premises the missing links in order to solve the Emergency calling issues, lawful intercept, survivability, security and redundancy requirements.

ITMag: Can everything be done centrally at the IMS core?

Beaudoin: Not really, you will need gateways not only during the transition but also after the full transition. This is why Mediatrix is focusing on intelligent gateways enabling service providers to keep the control on their services (and revenues) but also offering the legal services traditionally offered by PSTN in a seamless transition. We are positioning gateways that meet today’s requirement but most importantly the one needed tomorrow.

ITMag: What are some of the technology areas where Mediatrix is increasingly focusing, and why are these areas important to the future of your company?

Beaudoin: Mediatrix is now increasingly focused on security and convergence. On the security side, the goal is to have a global approach including the voice stream, the SIP signalling and the management of the gateways. Security is of the essence but must also comply with the needs for lawful intercept and emergency calling. Convergence (News - Alert) takes two dimensions in our priority. First, we need to provide convergence of the voice and data in an enterprise deployment with all of the requirements for proper quality of service, survivability, emergency number management and so forth. Second, we are also focusing on the fixed to mobile convergence by offering enterprise based solution IP-PBX addition supporting dual mode phones (SIP over WIFI and GSM) with seamless bi-directional handover.

All this focus is happening through partnership with established technology partners but also working and listening to the leading IMS and IP-PBX players in the market in order to provide integrated and complete solutions for the enterprise and carrier-enterprise markets.

ITMag: Describe your view of the future of the IP telephony industry.

Beaudoin: The IP telephony industry will experience some consolidation in the upcoming years. IMS deployments will take more expansion with a clear link with the enterprise IP-PBX systems with more and more reliable SIP trunks. IP telephony will of course converge to multimedia over IP.

Also the whole communication industry will converge to IP. I think we will end-up with a managed IP network supporting various applications — voice, video, entertainment — with different levels of services and features, for small, medium, large enterprise for residential customers. Communication applications will be custom-tailored to the user’s needs and not the other way around. It won’t be the case of a service provider offering a communication channel, but an application provider offering ‘à la carte’ services on a universal IP communication system. Can some form of VoIP peering become a reality, most likely yes, but when and how is quite a question. Replacing the mature PSTN by a pure IP infrastructure with the same reliability and country-specific regulation will still require a lot of time. IT

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