New features like availability, instant messaging, presence, speech recognition and unified communications being proffered by vendors at SUPERCOMM promise to give added punch to service providers' service portfolios and bottom lines.
Siemens was pushing voice recognition along with presence and availability as its two primary themes at SUPERCOMMM, says David Bloomquist, director of next generation applications and services for the vendor.
"You should be able to tell the network what you like verbally, for example, 'conference Joe in,'" he says. But, he adds, IVRs require expensive licenses so Siemens partner ThinkEngines uses words as triggers for applications. Only then is the command transferred to the full IVR feature set. Bloomquist explains that that process makes IVR more cost effective on a wide scale basis.
Siemens also invited its partner Evolving Systems to share its SUPERCOMM booth to demonstrate presence applications. Presence, Bloomquist explains, allows callers to know where you are physically. Availability, meanwhile, is to whom are you available and under what terms.
Presence and availability was also a key part of VocalData's message at SUPERCOMM.
The company, which is focused on call applications and software, announced at the show that its voice VPN is available and that unified communications and two mobility applications will be available later this year.
Laurie Shook, VocalData's vice president marketing, explains that a voice VPN addresses applications in which voice is going between dispersed locations; delivers local dialing plans; offers the ability to tell the difference between on-net and off-net traffic; and works with a properly engineered enterprise IP network. VocalData also has added hosted IP PBX on top of VPN voice, she says.
Meanwhile, VocalData's unified communications feature allows users to communicate via a variety of devices and even to change the media/device during the call. The company has integrated Microsoft Instant Messenger into its unified communications product. In fact, users can translate incoming voice to an instant messaging session "so you can multitask to your heart's delight," says Shook. VocalData also integrated instant messaging and presence, she adds, saying "we're told we're first with this."
VocalData offers two applications under the mobility category. The first is remote voice, which allows users to transfer their desk IP phone features to a remote cell phone or wireless phone. It also aggregates all billing from multiple devices, so for example, business calls aren't billed to users' home telephony accounts, although the users may use their home phones to accept some business calls. Remote voice also sends all voicemail to the business voicemail. The second mobility application from VocalData is VOISS Assistant, a Java-based application targeted at heavy communication users on the move. When a call comes in, the VOISS Assistant interface provides caller ID and various options to handle the call. "Long term we think the PC is the phone of the future," adds Shook.
As of SUPERCOMM, VocalData had only small customers and the system integration arm of Japan's NTT as its customers. The competitive carriers include Intermedia, Huntsville, Ala.-based Kancharla, Go-Comm, PingTone, New York-based M5 and Dallas-based Red Gap. Shook is especially excited about NTT COMWARE, which she says already has sold, installed and activated 10,000 lines. For some companies that number constitutes their total business, but it's just one customer for VocalData, says Shook. "Asia Pacific, we feel, is ripe for this," she adds. "The dominant carriers in Thailand, Japan, Australia and Indonesia have embraced VoIP."
The Asia Pacific also has brought new VoIP business to Alcatel. The company recently announced a deal to provide China Telecom with its 5000, 5020 and 7505 application servers and local service network management, says Sudeep Gupta, senior manager of NGN technical marketing. Alcatel, which has 12 deployments and 27 trials around the world for VoIP, also at SUPERCOMM touted its deal to provide France Telecom with its 5020 platform for local click to dial and Internet bypass.
As far as enhanced services, Alcatel discussed its Teen Line application, which uses the 5020 product to deliver a low cost second line (with its own phone number) integrated with instant messaging.
VocalTec Communications also unveiled a variety of new enhanced service capabilities at SUPERCOMM. The new 1.5 F.4 feature set was expected to become available late last month across VocalTec's line of products.
New features from VocalTec through that release include time-based routing, which allows the user to have calls routed among multiple devices based on time of day, day of week and special occasion. This means the service provider could offer different rates during days, nights or weekends, says Eran Barak, VocalTec's vice president of product marketing. "For example, if you were AT&T and you have relationships with five different U.K. carriers, each may give you different rates on a different time, so you can change your routing based on that," says Barak. "You could also use this if you have service downtime, so you can route all calls elsewhere. It also can be used in call centers, so they can follow the sun."
VocalTec also supports carrier-focused benefits in its new release. Those include overlap sending, which begins routing as each number is dialed to bring down post dial delay; a firewall to inspect VoIP traffic running across networks owned by different operators' networks; and support for Cisco fax.
