Voice over IP vendors SIP from standards soup

If you're looking for a cost-effective way to off-load voice traffic onto your data network, but can't choose between the alphabet soup of voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) standards on offer, your decision may soon be simplified.

VoIP technologies enable the transport of voice signals -- such as telephone calls -- over IP networks, reducing the need for dual infrastructures and potentially allowing for savings in wide-area network bandwidth. First brought into the public eye by Vocaltech's 1995 launch of an application allowing PC users on different continents to talk on the cheap over the Internet using "softphones" -- software emulating the functions of a telephone -- VoIP has matured into a product fit for the enterprise and has found its place in the service offerings of many large telecommunication operators, where phones which connect to Ethernet and not the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) are the dominant form of terminal.

Both ends of this spectrum are represented here at Comdex, and all shades in between, from Anyuser.net Co. Ltd.'s IP-based calling card service for consumers through four-, eight- and 12-port IPBXs (Internet Protocol Branch Exchanges) for small- and medium-size enterprises up to the 50,000-user private IP telephony network that systems integrator Electronic Data Systems Corp. (EDS) and Cisco Systems Inc. are building for Dow Chemical.

Equally diverse are the standards for VoIP communication, which come from the Internet world, the telephony world, and sometimes a mongrel mixture of both. Although no one standard is predominating yet, with H.323, MGCP (Media Gateway Control Protocol), Megaco (Media Gateway Control), and AVVID (Architecture for Voice, Video and Integrated Data) all still in the mix, more and more manufacturers are favoring the younger and more extensible Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) for their wares -- not least among them Microsoft Corp., which has built the Windows XP version of its Windows Messenger software around SIP.

"SIP integrates well with legacy systems. We have put it in the client (Windows Messenger), the server (version of Windows XP) and in embedded operating systems like Windows CE," said Mark Lee, a lead product manager at Microsoft.

While the software giant's move may result in a critical mass for SIP in the market -- every new PC running Windows XP with an Internet connection will have the capability to function as a SIP-compliant terminal -- the Redmond effect was not the primary influence on other IP telephony developers. Those exhibiting SIP products here at Comdex say they had already made their design decisions before hearing about Microsoft's plans.

"We chose SIP because H.323 is too complicated. The industry trend is towards SIP," said Augustine Kim vice president of Korean equipment manufacturer Sei Yang Network Communications Co. Ltd., one of the companies showing VoIP products.

Over at the stand of Voix Corp., another Korean firm, product development manager Jea Wook Myung said: "SIP is a new face, a good combination with other networks. It's more extensible than other protocols."

Some worry that Microsoft may try to embrace and extend the still-developing SIP standard to its own ends, but Jay Batson, chief executive officer (CEO) of SIP telephone manufacturer Pingtel Corp., said he has faith that Microsoft will not add too many proprietary variations to its implementation of SIP.

"I'm kind of counting on it," he said. "I'm making my strategic choices as if they will get it right."

Batson is not relying on the might of Redmond alone to bring SIP to market dominance. He is working with a number of carriers, in New York, Sweden, and Germany, to develop terminals for their IP Centrex services. Sales of his company's VoIP desktop telephone are still in trial quantities, a hundred here, a thousand there, he says. But he has high hopes that one day soon these trials will result in the rollout of a system capable of supporting 20 million subscribers, with the cost of the terminals (around US$600 each) subsidized by the network operators in much the same way that mobile phone operators subsidize terminals for new subscribers.

On the first day of the show, Batson spoke in a panel discussion on enterprise VoIP services with AT&T Corp. VoIP Business Services Manager Joe Aibinder and Cisco Systems Inc. Director of Product Marketing Bill Erdman.

Each had a very different perspective on the role of IP telephony. For Aibinder, VoIP is essentially a way of capturing new customers from rival operators by offering them something new.

Cisco sees VoIP as a cost-saving tool -- and one which it uses extensively itself. Of the roughly 500,000 IP telephones the company has manufactured, some 30,000 are in use internally. To demonstrate the company's faith in the technology, Erdman said. Employees have only one phone, an IP one, on their desk, "all the way up to John Chambers," he said, referring to the company's CEO.

Batson's vision of IP telephony is more one of improved service. By pushing the intelligence out to the edge of the network -- and into one of Pingtel's Java-enabled telephones -- customers have access to a greater variety of services, he said. Comparing voicemail systems with e-mail addresses, he suggested that IP telephones would allow users easy access to multiple voicemail services in addition to their standard corporate mailbox. His suggestion that this would let users "give a different number to telemarketers" brought a cheer from the panel discussion's audience.

It's possible that such intelligent phones will even make voicemail services more pleasurable to use. Compared to the hellish maze of voice-driven menus common on most corporate systems, the on-screen menu controls of Pingtel's phones (part of a display on a partner's stand; the company does not have a booth at the show) are a delight. Some user interface issues remain to be resolved, however: a large rotating knob apparently designed for scrolling menus seems better suited to winding the phone up in case of power failure, just like an old field telephone.

If Pingtel chose to exhibit its wares by stealth, other companies were more direct.

Sei Yang Network Communications exhibited a range of PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) called VOVID, with built-in IEEE 802.11b Wireless LAN cards and a proprietary telephony application running on Windows CE 3.0 which allowed them to function as SIP telephones when within range of a base station. The PDAs retail at around $600 each. The telephony server, with 12 external PSTN lines and capacity for 100 users, costs around $20,000, and several can be connected in parallel to increase capacity, according to Marketing Manager Paul Yew. The company has U.S. distribution but has yet to sell any units here.

At Voix they believe in telling it like it is: their combination PBX/VoIP gateway, which comes in a large flat case shaped like a pizza delivery box, is called the Unified Information Switch Pizza. Awaiting type approval from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Pizza will likely be available in the U.S. by February, priced around $2000, Myung said. It has four PSTN ports and eight Ethernet ports for SIP telephones.

Delivering pizza is all about being fast and mobile, so to deliver VoIP calls Voix also has the Mobile Station, a mobile Web pad with built-in CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) cellular phone and the IP station, a larger Web pad with built-in video camera for use as a mobile video phone. Both run Windows CE 3.0 and are awaiting FCC approval, but should go on sale in the U.S. in February for around $900 and $700 respectively, Myung said.

Welltech Computer Co. Ltd., showed a range of IPBXs, including its WellGate 2806 FXO, with six ports for conventional telephones and fax machines, and one Ethernet port for connection to an ADSL modem. This H.323 gateway can be used as a cost-effective link between a branch office and the telephone system at head office, a company representative said. The company also sells the LANphone 101, an IP telephone based on the H.323 protocol. Somewhat dated stylistically, the phone also suffered from a high degree of latency even in the small test network at the company's booth. It is priced at $120 in 1,000-unit quantities.