July 1999
The Enhanced Services Race: Heating Up
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BY GREG GALITZINE
As the fast-paced world of data communications collides with the heretofore deliberate,
plodding world of telecommunications, new opportunities are springing up like never
before. Traditional voice giants, such as AT&T and MCI/WorldCom , are carrying ever greater amounts of data
on their networks, and the recently fledgling Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are
beginning to rethink their positions on voice. The Competitive Local Exchange Carriers
(CLECs) are teaming up with ISPs at an increasing rate to enable a new way of doing
business, merging their resources and philosophies to generate new business and retain
existing customers.
It’s a marriage made in communications heaven, as ISPs look to add voice to their
menu of services and CLECs look to the world of Internet connectivity to augment their
offerings. It’s all about the services, and as the New World service providers choose
up sides and prepare enhanced service offerings to differentiate themselves, the race is
just heating up.
DOES SIZE MATTER?
So, as the telecom folks look to data and the data folks seek to offer voice, what’s
a bystander to make of all of this? Doesn’t it make sense that the larger
communications companies should be able to provide us with service that meets our
expectations? If the big guys are doing data now, why should we put all of our
communications needs into the hands of an up and coming service provider? Simply put,
speed and service. A smaller firm will always react to market pressure faster than the
established giants will. If customers are crying out for converged services, the smaller
ISP/CLEC combination will be able to tailor its offering faster than the traditional
stodgy old carrier.
Ok, so let’s say the small guy is offering a particular service, spends a fortune
on building up the infrastructure, acquiring customers, and marketing the service. Then
one day, the carrier steps in, and begins to offer the same exact service, only it’s
free. What would you do as the customer? Well, it’s no wonder customer retention is
such a difficult prospect. The trick is for the service provider to react quickly, find
out what the customer needs, and offer a wide palette of enhanced services before the big
guy gets a chance to head him off at the next pass. The two elements that are needed to
maintain such a strategy are a platform upon which to create the next-generation of
enhanced services, and the services themselves.
MAGELLAN’S MARINER
I recently had the chance to sit down with Jeff Paine and Bill Leslie of Magellan Network Systems . The folks at Magellan have
spent the last three years designing a telecom services system that can address the issues
of speed and service. Just released in beta, and scheduled for general availability next
month, Magellan’s Mariner system is designed to speed creation and deployment of
differentiated services for both PSTN and Internet telephony (VoIP) networks. Initially,
the product is optimized for PSTN use, but an IP network-ready version of Mariner will be
available by the middle of Q399.
According to Jeff Paine, Magellan’s VP of marketing, “Mariner’s
architecture is designed to let New World carriers take on the traditional telco world and
win.” Mariner’s CTI-based open architecture enables service providers to more
rapidly create and deploy new services than traditional Intelligent Network service
creation tools. The system’s Service Creation Environment (SCE) enables fast and easy
layout of enhanced service call flows using an integrated modified version of Visio. Once
the call flows are compiled, they are loaded into Mariner’s distributed Service
Execution Environment (SEE), at which point they are available for use within the network.
The product, currently based on Cisco’s (www.cisco.com) VCO 4K programmable switch,
comes with its own real-time customer care and billing suite, called Manifest. Manifest
also supports real-time fraud control.
WHAT ABOUT THE SERVICES?
Magellan provides the creation and deployment environment, but what about applications?
Premiere Technologies
One company that’s already involved in network-based applications is Premiere Technologies . Their Orchestrate product suite
is a unified messaging service that does wonders for road warriors. To begin with, the
company has approximately 4,500 cities in 12 countries that are connected to their
network-based voice messaging application. That means that users get ubiquitous local
access to their messages. No more long-distance charges just to find out that the local
newspaper is having another subscription drive, and by the way, would you be so kind as to
call back?
Premiere’s Orchestrate runs on Sun Microsystems’
Solaris hardware, and in fact, Sun has promised to jointly market the unified messaging
solution with Premiere. The system lets users check all of their messages by phone: Voice
mail, e-mail, and fax (headers). If you prefer to check messages from your PC, then voice
mail appears as a Real Audio attachment, which you can hear through the PC’s
speakers. The Orchestrate system takes advantage of text-to-speech technology as well, so
users can reply to voice mail, with, say an e-mail, which can be converted to a voice
message deposited into the recipient’s voice mailbox.
Premiere also offers an enhanced service called Orchestrate Personal Assistant. Similar
to several other available technologies, the service allows users to retain a single point
of contact for e-mail, voice mail, faxes, and follow-me service: extremely useful for the
on-the-go business traveler.
There are quite a few other network-based virtual assistants available as well. In
fact, TMC Labs’ own Evan Koblentz put together an in-depth comparison of the various
virtual assistants in the June issue of CTI
magazine. I urge you to check it out online at www.ctimag.com.
Three of the more established players in the space are General Magic , Wildfire
Communications, and Webley Systems . Their product
offerings are also the most robust, offering natural speech recognition as the preferred
method of accessing your services.
General Magic
This past May, BellSouth began offering General Magic’s Portico personal assistant
service to its customers. The service delivers to customers a variety of features that
manage and simplify communications, including:
- Voice dialing — Place calls by simply speaking the digits of the phone number, or
by speaking the name of the person you are calling if they are listed in your personal
phonebook.
- Personal organizer — Manage your phone book list or schedule appointments over the
phone or via a Web browser.
- Public information access — Stay plugged into news and stock activity with
customized information. The personal assistant will even notify you if the price of your
favorite stock changes throughout the day.
The Portico service also provides users with a unified messaging platform to keep track of
all of their disparate e-mail, voice mail, and fax messages.
Wildfire
Addressing the ever increasing number of wireless users, Wildfire has been engaged in
trials with Orange, one of the United Kingdom’s largest and fastest growing digital
mobile phone network operators.
Wildfire takes messages and phone numbers, when users cannot answer their calls. The
program actually has a personality and as well as following spoken instructions, can also
make and take calls. As the service is used recurrently, Wildfire develops and adapts to a
user’s personal requirements, building up a personal list of names and numbers.
Orange marketing literature has labeled this feature “a phonebook in the sky.”
Wildfire can store up to 150 personal contacts, with six phone numbers for each contact,
including home, work and mobile. All a user has to say, for example, is “Wildfire,
call Greg at home,” and the service will immediately place the call.
France Telecom is also currently in trials of the enhanced service for SOHO
professionals. The trial service — the first of its kind in France — is
scheduled to run until September 30.
Webley
Webley, from Webley Systems, is another competitor in the virtual assistant space. The
product’s British accent gives it the air of being the classiest system, but of
course, that doesn’t help road warriors in and of itself. While Webley may lack some
of the features associated with the two assistants mentioned above, Webley stands out for
its superb conference calling features and its relatively low price.
Onebox.com
Another interesting enhanced service that I recently stumbled upon is from a startup
called Onebox.com. Onebox.com is a free phone and
Web-based service that allows consumers to easily access all communications needs from one
convenient place. Anyone who relies on e-mail, from mobile professionals to college
students, will appreciate One-box.com’s simplicity and privacy. Users can receive,
share, store and organize all their messages, and it works with any existing e-mail
account. Also, when the Web is not accessible, users are able to retrieve their messages
from any phone.
The difference between the Onebox approach and other unified messaging vendors,
according to Julie Farris, Onebox’s director of marketing, is that the company uses a
Web approach, not a telephony approach. Primarily targeted towards the consumer market,
the company told me that they would be willing to partner with and perhaps even sell their
service to ISPs and other carriers to resell to their customers.
CONCLUSION
Obviously, the enhanced services that I mentioned here are but a drop in the bucket when
compared to the massive effort underway to provide users with the enhanced services that
will dominate and define the telecommunications market in the not-too-distant future. For
more information on any of the services mentioned in this article, visit the
companies’ Web sites. And to see what other players are involved in the enhanced
services space, check out the news items flanking this article. This market is just
beginning to take off, so hold on, it’s gonna be a fun ride.
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Services News
MediaOne And AT&T Sign Merger Agreement, Microsoft Agrees To
Accelerate Deployment of Broadband Services
MediaOne Group and AT&T have entered into a definitive merger agreement
under which MediaOne Group’s shareholders will receive .95 of a share of AT&T
common stock, and at least $30.85 in cash for each share of MediaOne Group stock they own.
AT&T and Microsoft have announced a series of agreements in which they will work
together to accelerate the deployment of next-generation broadband and Internet services.
Microsoft will purchase $5 billion of AT&T securities, AT&T will increase its use
of Microsoft’s TV software platform in advanced set-top devices, and both companies
will work together to showcase new digital cable services.
No. 540, www.itmag.com/freeinfo
CableLabs Certifies GI And Arris Cable Modems
Cable Television Laboratories (CableLabs) have announced that they have
certified for retail sale cable modems from General Instrument (GI) and Arris Interactive.
CableLabs has qualified headend equipment needed for interoperable high-speed data
distribution from Cisco Systems. The GI and Arris announcement results from additional
testing necessary to isolate the source of nonconformance with the cable modem
specification which otherwise would have resulted in these suppliers’ products not
being certified.
No. 541, www.itmag.com/freeinfo
Tekelec Intros IP7 Suite Of ProductsFor Telcos And ISPs
Tekelec has announced a new product line designed to enable the convergence
of voice and data networks. The IP7 product line delivers flexible SS7 and IP connectivity
and features to allow carriers and service providers to seamlessly link the PSTN and IP
networks. Tekelec’s products couple the command and control functions of the SS7
network with the speed and economy of the IP network, and include IP maintenance,
monitoring, and diagnostics. The initial product offering includes IP7 Secure Gateway, IP7
Edge, IP7 NP (number portability/number pooling), and IP7 Sentinel.
No. 542, www.itmag.com/freeinfo
Priority Telecom Launches Int’l VoIP Backbone
Priority Telecom, the competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) and integrated telephony
services division of United Pan-Europe Communications, has announced the first phase
implementation of its international telecommunications network strategy. This phase of
development will connect Priority Telecom switches located in Oslo, Norway; Paris, France;
and Vienna, Austria, utilizing the Cisco family of router and VoIP products. The
interconnection of switches will allow Priority Telecom to take full advantage of IP
technology in maximizing the utilization of the existing backbone, while increasing the
least cost routing availability for the company’s international traffic.
No. 543, www.itmag.com/freeinfo
NetSpeak’s New Solutions Suite Unleashes Revenue Potential Of
VoIP For Service Providers
NetSpeak Corp. has unveiled a new solutions suite, which makes it easier for
service providers to produce revenue-generating VoIP solutions. The NetSpeak solutions
suite is based on the company’s intelligent call management and scripting
technologies and H.323v2-compatibility. At the heart of this new suite is the NetSpeak
Gatekeeper, an H.323v2-compatible technology which locates and controls any of
NetSpeak’s other call management products — Route Server, Media Server, Event
Management Server, WebPhone, Mini WebPhone, Gateway Exchange — and any
H.323v2-interoperable edge device.
No. 544, www.itmag.com/freeinfo
HarmonyCom Unveils Harmony
HarmonyCom has announced Harmony, providing a fresh approach to enable
broadband data services “to be delivered right the first time.” Harmony’s
dynamic end-to-end model of the service and network resources allows service providers to
access real-time service and network information in order to automate new service orders,
design services, and reserve resources for service activation. This approach helps service
providers reduce the complexities of the service provisioning process, improving customer
service while reducing overall operating costs.
No. 545, www.itmag.com/freeinfo
U S WEST Licenses Phone.com’s Wireless Internet Platform
Phone.com (formerly Unwired Planet) has announced that U S WEST has licensed the Phone.com
UP.Link Server Suite to enhance its wireless data infrastructure. The UP.Link Server
Suite, comprised of server, microbrowser, and software development kit, is a
comprehensive, open, and robust system that enables interactive Internet information
services, and value-added telephony applications on wireless handsets running the
UP.Browser microbrowser. U S WEST’s PCS CDMA data infrastructure enhanced with the
UP.Link Server Suite is a complete wireless voice and data network solution.
No. 546, www.itmag.com/freeinfo
Astrolink Formed With $900 Million Investment By Lockheed Martin,
Telespazio, And TRW
Astrolink LLC has announced that it has received $900 million in equity from
founding partners Lockheed Martin Global Telecommunications, Telespazio, and TRW, Inc.
With this funding, Astrolink has begun construction of the system, which will be the
world’s first global on-demand, wireless broadband service provider, scheduled to
offer service in 2003. Astrolink will focus on the high-growth area of broadband data
services, carrying traffic for Internet, intranet, multimedia, and corporate data
networks.
No. 547, www.itmag.com/freeinfo
NetPhone Intros IPBXmail Visual Voice Mail
NetPhone has announced the NetPhone IPBXmail visual voice mail system, which enables users
to access and administer voice mail messages from a Web browser, and to view messages
integrated with their e-mail inboxes. Additional capabilities help users screen,
prioritize, and queue calls, plus route calls automatically to home or cell numbers, or to
coworkers. IPBXmail will be bundled with NetPhone IPBX, NetPhone’s open system for
integrating voice and data communications across corporate intranets.
No. 548, www.itmag.com/freeinfo
VIP Calling And Glocalnet Peer To Achieve Global Presence
VIP Calling and Glocalnet have announced an agreement to provide peering between their IP
telephony networks. Since both VIP Calling and Glocalnet operate networks based on Cisco
equipment, their combined presence creates the first truly global, toll-quality, one-stage
dialing Internet telephony network. Under the agreement, Glocalnet will benefit from VIP
Calling’s comprehensive IP telephony footprint in the Americas, Europe, Middle East,
and Asia. VIP Calling will gain access to Glocalnet’s leading European network,
adding numerous POPs to the VIP Calling network.
No. 549, www.itmag.com/freeinfo
Cisco Launches Voice Applications Partner Program
Cisco Systems has announced a new partner program that creates a system of partners
developing innovative voice applications on an open network architecture. Cisco’s
approach enables the reuse of existing telephony applications in a New World
infrastructure and accelerates the innovation of services that span the voice and data
worlds. More than 40 charter members of the Cisco Voice Applications Partner (VAP) program
are delivering services on Cisco’s infrastructure today.
No. 550, www.itmag.com/freeinfo
NetCentric Supplies 1,000 Ports For GTE Network Expansion
NetCentric Corp. has announced that GTE Internetworking is expanding its IP fax network
capacity by purchasing 1,000 additional ports of NetCentric FaxStorm technology. This is
the single largest follow-on order from any NetCentric customer, and will enable
GTE’s IP fax network to handle more than 10 million additional minutes of traffic per
month. The expansion of GTE’s service, which was launched in January 1999, reflects
the carrier’s emergence as a leading IP fax network provider.
No. 551, www.itmag.com/freeinfo
Microcell First To Offer Saride.com’s Two-Way Wireless
E-mail Service
Sarade.com has announced the availability of its first end-to-end wireless data service
— two-way wireless e-mail. Microcell Solutions is the first carrier to offer this
service to its subscribers. Branded as Fido E-mail, Sarade.com’s new service is
included as part of a new enhanced services package called FidoPro. FidoPro will be
available to Microcell’s Fido subscribers. Sarade.com will soon provide this
service to wireless carriers worldwide.
No. 552, www.itmag.com/freeinfo
WinStar Launches New Internet Roaming Service
WinStar Communications has announced the launch of a global Internet roaming service that
provides WinStar dial-up customers with worldwide access to the Internet via local
connections in more than 140 countries. The new national and international roaming service
provides secure, cost-effective access to the Internet or customer corporate intranets
from more than 1,000 points of presence (POPs) worldwide. Global Internet roaming
capability is the latest addition to WinStar’s integrated portfolio of Web-based
services.
No. 553, www.itmag.com/freeinfo
Clarent Announces Clarent ThroughPacket
Clarent Corp. has announced the development of Clarent ThroughPacket, a
technology for reducing congestion in IP telephony networks. The ThroughPacket technology
uses a unique IP multiplexing technique which transmits voice packets through a network
using less bandwidth and causing less congestion when compared to standard IP voice
transmissions. Clarent ThroughPacket dramatically reduces router delays and dropped
packets when queues overflow. Clarent has had patents pending on this technology since May
1998.
No. 554, www.itmag.com/freeinfo
FaxNet Launches FaxMission 3.0
FaxNet Corp. has announced FaxMission 3.0, an easy-to-use fax application to
send and receive faxes directly from a PC. FaxMission uses the Internet, the PSTN, and
FaxNet’s telco-grade platform to provide a highly reliable and secure system for
transmitting and receiving data. A new outbound feature in FaxMission 3.0 is the ability
to send faxes from any e-mail client, including Web-based forms. Additional features
include the ability to send to both fax and e-mail addresses in lists and receive results
of broadcasts as comma delimited text files.
No. 555, www.itmag.com/freeinfo
ArelNet Adds Enhanced Services To i-Tone Voice/Fax IP Gateway
Solution
ArelNet Ltd. has announced the addition of enhanced services and features to
its popular i-Tone IP gateway gatekeeper solution with i-Tone Version 3.5. i-Tone Version
3.5 is an expanded IP telephony solution for IP voice and fax that supports various
services on the same platform. The I-Tone 3.5 is designed for a wide range of
communications service providers, and adds fully re-engineered gatekeeper and management
software to provide improved performance, reliability, availability, and interoperability
between functional components.
No. 556, www.itmag.com/freeinfo
visitalk.com Answers The Call For Internet Voice, Video, And Data
Communications
visitalk.com has announced that its global communications ports were
operational on June 1 when it launched the Internet’s first global switchboard and
permanent directory for real-time PC-to-PC communications. visitalk.com’s
communication portal enables users of voice, video, and data conferencing software
programs like Microsoft’s NetMeeting and White Pine Software’s CU-SeeMe to call
each other with the ease of placing a regular phone call. visitalk.com’s system is
compatible with these and other industry standard H.323 software programs/clients like
Intel’s Create & Share, Netscape’s Communicator, and IBM/Lotus’
Farsight.
No. 557, www.itmag.com/freeinfo
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