A new server from Lucent Technologies may finally start to address the problems that have confounded Net telephony - software compatibility, network capacity, and call quality. Lucent's latest box will merge voice and data networks and allow voice calls and faxes to travel more easily across the Net, the company said Monday.
Lucent was sketchy on the details of the Internet Telephony Server SP (service provider), citing the need for testing. Nonetheless, the mere presence of the telecommunications giant in the fledgling realm of Internet telephony gives the field a big boost, said Jeff Pulver, founder of the Voice on the Net Coalition.
"They're making it real. [Lucent's announcement] helps validate the industry and will help turn a US$40 million industry into a multibillion-dollar business by the end of this century," said Pulver, on the eve of the VON's Spring '97 conference in San Francisco.
Part of the problem with placing a call across the Net is that users must both be running the same software - and mostly they aren't. So one company's Internet telephony package isn't compatible with another developer's package.
Lucent's Telephony Server skirts the compatibility issue by eliminating the need for end-user software altogether. Instead, the server, placed at a local exchange carrier's central office or at an Internet service provider's facilities, handles the conversions and routing.
Telephony Server will receive voice and fax calls from the telephone network, convert them into digitized packets, send them across a combination of private data networks and the Net to a second Lucent server at the receiving station. This second server will convert the packetized call back into a voice or fax call that goes to the central office switch, where it is routed to the recipient.
The resulting transfer is more efficient because less bandwidth is being used at any given time, said Gerry Butters, president of Lucent's North American network-systems business. Lucent estimates that a packetized call will save half the bandwidth that's available, mostly because transfers of data occur only when there is data to send.
By contrast, calls across the public telephone networks perform transfer functions constantly, using up all the available bandwidth for the duration of the call.
As for quality of the connections, Butters said voice calls will still have a slight delay - roughly 100 to 200 milliseconds. Faxes will appear to operate in real time, however.
Butters said only voice-to-voice and fax-to-fax calls will be sent in initial tests, which will be conducted throughout 1997 by GTE, MCI, and France Telecom. Eventually, carriers will be able to add capabilities to these transfers, including computer-to-fax and computer-to-phone communications.
