VoIP for Dummies 2005

Chapter 18: Ten VoIP Manufacturers 229

Siemens

Munich, Germany 800-743-6367 www.siemens.com

Siemens is a publicly traded company that manufactures electronics and equipment for a range of industries, including information and communications, automation and control, power generation, transportation, medical, and lighting. They provide mobile communication and telephone communication systems to businesses and mobile phones and accessories to consumers. Siemens employs approximately seventy thousand people in the United States and four-hundred-thirty thousand worldwide, with global sales of more than $91 billion in 2004.

With respect to IP telephony, according to Gartner, “Siemens is focusing on its installed base of Hicom 300 systems, offering transition paths to IP for small, midsize and large businesses. However, migration gaps exist for users of pre-9006 release software, which Siemens is addressing with financial incentives designed to motivate customers to move to the HiPath 4000.”

Alcatel

Paris, France 800-252-2835 www.alcatel.com

Alactel provides communications solutions to telecommunication carriers, Internet service providers, and enterprises. A publicly traded company with fifty-six thousand employees worldwide, Alcatel’s focus is the delivery of voice, data, and video applications to customers and employees.

Their OmniPCX communications platform enables a company to selectively operate using traditional or IP telephony methods. The platform is capable of supporting hybrid operations as well.

Chapter 18: Ten VoIP Manufacturers 231

According to Gartner, “NEC’s portfolio offers various levels of converged IP capabilities, a multitude of features, scalability, and investment protection. Their platforms have an excellent reputation in the education, hospitality, and healthcare vertical markets, with attributes that can attract other organizations with distributed campus environments . . . NEC Unified Solutions strategy offers a menu of services that support the planning, implementation, network readiness and ongoing service needs of IP telephony.”

3COM

Marlborough, Massachusetts 800-638-3266

www.3com.com

3COM has come a long way since the days when it was the world leader in the manufacture of network interface cards (NIC). Today, they continue to make networking and convergence products and services.

Founded in 1979, 3COM is a public company that employs approximately nineteen hundred people worldwide. Their NBX product line has met with great success in the smallto medium-sized marketplace. According to Gartner, “3COM enjoys an excellent reputation among users of its products, not only in IP telephony, but also data networking.”

Shoretel

Sunnyvale, California 800-425-9385 www.shoretel.com

Shoretel, founded in 1998, is a privately held company that is all about IP telephony. Their approach is to evaluate your network first before designing a solution. The idea here is to determine how ready you are first, before taking the step into VoIP convergence.

According to Gartner, Shoretel’s “product architecture gives organizations distributed call control across multiple locations through an IP backbone that supports the use of IP and analog telephones. This enables organizations to implement a converged network at their own pace.”

Part V

Appendixes

In this part . . .

Unlike the human body (where some folks consider the appendix a useless part), the appendixes you

find here actually provide some great information.

When it comes time to look for a competent VoIP partner, you’ll find the information in Appendix A quite helpful. It ranks the top ten VoIP manufacturers, in order of revenue.

Are you befuddled by an unfamiliar word you’ve run across? Relax — chances are good that you can find the telecom or VoIP term you need in the glossary.

Appendix A

VoIP Providers

The VoIP provider market has been growing in leaps and bounds since AT&T announced in January 2004 that it was abandoning traditional car-

rier services as a way of doing business. What they were abandoning was the way of doing business outlined in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The act defined ILECs, or Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers. ILECs (or simply LECs) owned all the physical lines in a given area. Everyone else had to

go through ILEC to get any kind of access. The act also defined CLECs (Competitive Local Exchange Carriers). CLECs leased access lines at wholesale from the ILECs.

The customers, of course, ultimately paid the bill. Either they could get lines directly from an ILEC, or they could get them from a CLEC, who in turn got them from the same ILEC. Many analysts would say that the act had a beneficial effect on the marketplace, particularly with interstate long-distance costs. But in local markets, ILECs dominated because, no matter what, they had a piece of the action. And because ILEC controlled the actual physical installation of the access lines, any shortcomings in their service had a negative impact on the CLEC’s customers.

CLECs, of which AT&T was one, are now using packet-switching protocols to provide VoIP services over their existing networks, rather than leasing POTS lines from ILECs at wholesale pricing. ILECs are now in a position where they could lose significant revenue. The fewer POTS lines installed by ILECs, the less revenue they have from wireline services.

For CLECs, the way is clear. Should they use circuit-switched POTS services at wholesale pricing, which they then mark up for their customers? Or do they use packet-switching services with VoIP, at a fraction of the wholesale price, using their own existing networks and offering their customers a much better value?

It is no small wonder why in the past six months the ILEC powers-that-be have sought to acquire the largest CLECs that offer VoIP. As a result of these changes in the marketplace, many argue that the corporate and consumer buying public will lose some of the choices they had when the lines between ILECs and CLECs were more clear. I disagree. With the inception of VoIP and the maturation of wireless, the choices for telephony and video services are increasing.

236 Part V: Appendixes

As a potential consumer, you need to know who is offering VoIP carrier services and who is offering the leased access lines you need to build or upgrade your VoIP network. Table A-1 lists the top ten VoIP carrier providers, ranked in order of gross revenue.

The first six carriers and number eight — Verizon, SBC, AT&T, Sprint, BellSouth, MCI, and Qwest — are able to lease or release any of the transports or transport services covered in Chapters 4 through 7. For example, to set up or upgrade a private dedicated network to run VoIP (see Chapter 7), your company most likely would work with one carrier to acquire the transports at each of your locations. The carriers can also offer VoIP services.

The seventh carrier, Comcast, is also the country’s largest cable provider. The cable industry is not regulated, so the rules of the Telecommunication Act of 1996 do not apply to their cable services in the same way. They are permitted to be CLECs for the purpose of offering other services. For instance, if they lease cable service to your home, you may also get POTS service over that cable. For them to offer you POTS, they have to have transports into the PSTN. They can also lease VoIP services to you that run over your cable line.

The ninth carrier, Nextel Communications, is a cellular company, and the tenth, DIRECTV Group, is a satellite carrier company that offers broadband DSL to the consumer market.

Appendix A: VoIP Providers 237

The best place to start exploring for more information on any of the top ten is to visit their Web sites. Most of the sites have contact information and more details about their services:

www.verizon.com

www.sbc.com

www.att.com

www.sprint.com

www.bellsouth.com

www.mci.com

www.comcast.com

www.qwest.com

www.nextel.com

www.directv.com