InformationWeek

December 8, 1997

Bellcore Targets IP Voice

Unit aims to create architecture for voice-over-IP network

ell Communications Research, the former technology unit of the regional Bell companies, will announce this week the creation of a company that expects to provide the architecture for a new public Internet Protocol network dedicated to carrying voice.

The Bellcore unit, Soliant Internet Systems, plans to supply software that would apply the intelligent routing of the existing phone network to IP telephony, as well as address billing issues. Soliant expects to announce partnerships with telecom equipment manufacturers in the first quarter of next year.

The entry of Bellcore, which the regional Bells sold last month to Science Applications International Corp. in San Diego, lends credibility to the voice-over-IP market. But Bellcore disagrees with those who see a convergence of the circuit-switched and packet-switched networks.

"We think it's divergent," says Jac Simensen, general manager of Soliant. By the end of 1998, he says, a new IP network, called a public packet network (PPN), will begin to emerge that's completely separate from the existing public phone network and largely independent of the public portions of the Internet. The PPN will have no circuit switches and all its own pipes, Simensen says. "That's where Internet voice is really going to thrive" because it will be possible to control quality, he adds.

Bellcore's vision "runs counter to common wisdom," says Eric Paulak, an analyst at Gartner Group Inc. A new network, he adds, would probably be too expensive and difficult to build and run.

Separately, a Net telephony startup last week announced the availability of a service for settling payments between Internet service providers and phone companies that route calls over the Net. ITXC Corp., which is backed by AT&T and is headed by AT&T WorldNet founder Tom Evslin, plans to start service trials in February and roll out commercial service in the second quarter.

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