Vendors Unite Behind Voice-Over-IP; Customers Are Still Wary

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April 02, 1998 (9:16 AM EST)

Vendors Unite Behind Voice-Over-IP; Customers Are Still Wary

By Mary E. Thyfault,

Reducing telecommunications costs by as much as 40 percent and creating applications that integrate both voice and data traffic are some of the reasons behind the growing interest in voice-over-IP, said attendees of this week's Voice on the Net conference in San Jose, Calif.

"You can mix really easily in the IP world," said Eric Sumner, chief technology officer of Lucent Technologies, in Murray Hill, N.J. "In [the traditional telephone network] world, you can mix, but it's just really hard, and that stifles innovation."

One of the first voice-over-IP applications is adding voice capability to company Web pages. Visitors to a website who have questions or who are hesitant to make a purchase over the Web can click on a "call agent" button, which transmits a voice call over the user's multimedia PC or sends a message for the agent to call back on a separate line.

"Voice is the missing link in e-commerce," said Paul Shaneck, global wireline segment executive at IBM, based in Armonk, N.Y. "IP telephony can form a new paradigm by cutting costs of communicating with customers and suppliers."

This year, leading private branch exchange phone manufacturers are expected to add IP interfaces to their phone systems. This will make it easy for corporations to send their intracompany voice traffic over excess capacity on their IP data network. "This is going to be the heart of intracorporate communications," said Joe Rinde, MCI director of switched network architecture.

While vendors are bullish about the potential for voice-over-IP, customers have yet to exhibit the same enthusiasm. This week, for instance, there were few end users at the show. "This conference is a vendor love-in," said Christopher Mines, an analyst with Forrester Research, in Cambridge, Mass. "Where are the customers?"

Mines said he believes customers who spend a lot on international voice traffic and fax service are prime targets for using voice-over-IP. Until now, customers have been hesitant to add their voice traffic to IP networks, fearing quality would degrade. While quality is improving, many say it is still not on par with traditional service.

But vendors are pushing hard for the technology. Yesterday, IP middleware vendor RadVision of Mahwah, N.J., announced that two additional companies, Ascend Communications and Natural Microsystems, are supporting its H.323 technology, a standard for using multimedia over IP networks.

Separately, Lucent said it will resell RadVision H.320/H.323 Gateway, which lets users whose PCs support IP-based desktop videoconferencing communicate with videoconferencing room systems based on ISDN, which uses the H.320 standard.