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The August 24, 1998 Issue:

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IN THIS ISSUE: 

In this issue:

- Heard on the Net
People News
- Carl Silva
- Patrick Fetterman
- Bryan Rowe
Funding Announcements
- MCK Communications
- Advanced Radio Telecom
- SALIX Technologies
Company News
- Telia Light
- PSINet
- VegaStream
- Hypercom
- Level 3
- StarVox
- VIPCalling
- IDT
- Future PSTN/IP Gateways need to support DATA
- Telecom Equipment Vendors: The Challenge is to keep your customers 
- The IP Telephony Protocol MELTING pot
- Meeting NOTES from the July 28th IP Telephony MoU Meeting 
- The true value of Internet Telephony to Service Providers is APPLICATIONS
- Update on "Building the IP Based Central Office" workshop at Fall '98 VON
- What's up with the term Carrier Grade? 
- The Nebraska PSC is seeking comment on regulation of IP telephony
- Growing up on the Net
- Update: Fall '98 Voice on the Net 
- Call for Speakers - Fax on the Net - November 13, 1998 in Amsterdam 
- pulver.com 1998 Conference/Workshop Calendar 

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"Heard on the Net"

News about Companies and People effecting the IP Telephony Industry

People News
-----------

During the past few weeks the following people have changed jobs:

- Carl Silva who recently left Bellcore ended up at SAIC and not Netspeak.
( http://www.saic.com )

- Patrick Fetterman - Patrick has left Natural Microsystems and will
be joining a startup software development company. 
( http://www.nmss.com )

- Bryan Rowe - Bryan has left OzEmail and has started a NextGen Telco
called NextTelecom. 
( http://www.ozemail.com.au )

Funding Announcements
------------------------------

MCK Communications, Inc. - MCK recently announced receipt of US$ 5 million
in private equity financing from Lazard Technology Partners and 
BankBoston's Technology Lending Group. MCK will use the financing to 
advance it's product development and to support its OEM partners which 
include: Lucent, NEC, Nortel and Mitel/Gandalf.
( http://www.mck.com )

Advanced Radio Telecom (ART) - ART recently announced that Lucent
Technologies has committed up to US$25 Million in financing for the company.
ART plans to use the financing for its metropolitan area networks in Seattle,
Portland and Phoenix which will support IP Telephony.
( http://www.art-net.net ) ( http://www.lucent.com )

SALIX Technologies - SALIX Technologies recently announced receipt of 
US$ 8 Million in financing from New Enterprise Associates and Grotech Capital
Group. SALIX reports that the capitol will be used for the development 
of carrier-class communications products, particularly IP/PSTN 
convergence technologies.
( http://www.salix.com )


Company Mergers/Acquisions:
----------------------------

The period of 1998/99 will be remembered as the Golden Age of the Telecom 
Industry. The Summer of '98 has been an especially active one and in just 
the past few weeks the following mergers and acquisitions have been announced:

Bell Atlantic and GTE ( http://www.bellatlanic.com ) ( http://www.gte.com )
Cisco and Summa Four ( http://www.cisco.com ) ( http://www.summafour.com )
Ascend and Stratus ( http://www.ascend.com ) ( http://www.stratus.com )


Company News 
--------------

Telia Light - Last week while I was in Stockholm I had a chance to get 
together with the founders of Telia Light. In conversations I learned that 
Telia Light will be offering IP Telephony Services in both Finland and 
Denmark in addition to Sweden. Telia Light will be introducing a new 
low-price overseas calling service aimed primarily at Nordic subscribers. 

Telia Budget Call will open for business on September 1st. Telia Light 
will be offering a wide range of value-added services that are available 
in an IP-based environment including: PC Telephony and Internet-based 
directories. 
( http://www.telia.se )

PSINet - PSINet recently announced they selected Ascend as the vendor 
which they will be using to roll out their US based IP Voice services.
( http://www.ascend.com ) ( http://www.psi.com )

VegaStream - VegaStream recently announced their gateway product, the 
Vega 100 which can support up to 120 calls. The Vega 100 was built using
Telogy's embedded hardware products. The reported price per port is US$ 325.
( http://www.vegastream.com ) ( http://www.telogy.com )

Hypercom - Hypercom Network Systems recently announced their new voice 
switch module designed for integration into its IP.Tel 6000 Internet 
Telephony Gateway.
( http://www.hypercom.com )

Level 3 - Level 3 recently announced that the Technical Advisory Council 
(TAC) has released technical specifications for a new protocol suite 
aimed at bridging PSTN and IP based Networks. The specification is 
called: Internet Protocol Device Control (IPDC). IPDC was designed to 
enable external control and management of data communications equipment
( http://www.l3.com )

StarVox - StarVox recently announced their StarGate product line which is 
a Network telephony based solution for the corporate WAN. StarGate includes
two key features: Failsafe and Falback. Failsafe detects end-point 
failures over the data network and in the event of a failure it reroutes 
the call over the PSTN before the connection is established. Fallback 
monitors clal latency and reroutes any degrading WAN calls over the PSTN 
without breaking the connection
( http://www.starvox.com )

VIPCalling - VIPCalling and Rimnet Corporation have recently announced an 
agreement to form a peering relationship for the Japanese IP Telephony 
market.
( http://www.vipcalling.com ) ( http://www.rimnet.co.jp )

IDT - IDT continued it's busy summer of announcements. IDT recently 
announced a relationships with Creative and Excite. In addition they 
announced reduced prices for Net2Phone calls to Western Europe.
( http://www.creative.com ) ( http://www.excite.com ) ( http://www.idt.net)

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Future PSTN/IP Gateways need to support DATA

One of the key elements missing from today's genre of PSTN/IP Gateways 
is the support of Data calls. Sure one can place phone to phone 
calls through gateways and many gateways now support fax, but try 
placing a data call from one gateway through another and you might be 
surprised what the results are.

Frankly, I've started to believe that until Gateways support Data Calls 
there will not be a widespread deployment of Gateways in mainstream 
service providers worldwide. Pure arbitrage plays exist and will 
continue to be fair game until there is accounting rate parity. 

But if a Service Provider wants to have "equal access" when providing 
competing telephony services - how many customers do you think service 
providers would be able to retain if/when their customers find out that 
they can't place data/modem calls over their phone network? 

Of course the companies producing these gateways are well aware of their 
limitations and one would hope that this limitation will be solved in the 
near term. I've heard that one of the reasons Nortel acquired Aptis, 
Lucent acquired Livingston and Level 3 acquired XCom was because each of 
these acquired companies had technology which helped differentiate the 
difference between voice calls, fax calls and data calls. In addition 
there are a number of companies which are developing IP Voice Switches 
(some of them will be at Fall '98 VON) which have the promise of being 
able to have this differentiation quality as well.

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Telecom Equipment Vendors: The Challenge is to keep your customers 

Looking at the way Telecom Equipment vendors have been reorganizing in 1998 
and re-focusing their direction to compete in the Data world (mostly 
against Cisco) - one of the biggest challenges they collectively face is 
the challenge to keep their existing customer base once their existing 
customers start their purchasing commitments for the year 2001 and beyond.

While it's easy to spot the short-term tactical moves that are being made 
today by the various players in the industry - especially with some 
of the PC type offerings, and a desire to make an announcement for 
the sake of making an announcement, I just hope the Telecom Equipment 
vendors realize that one of their biggest challenges they face is to be 
there when their 'traditional' and existing customers start to make 
commitments to IP voice. 

------------------------------------------------------------------
The IP Telephony Protocol MELTING pot

During the past few months, in addition to H.323, quite a few IP Telephony 
protocol proposals have started to circulate within the industry including: 
SIP, SGCP and IPDC.

During the next few weeks I expect that there will be plenty of 
discussions regarding these and other alternative protocols at the August 
IETF meetings in Chicago and the Portland ETSI/TIPHON meeting and the 
VoIP Forum meeting which take place the first week of September. 

Many of the players who have contributed to the IP Telephony Protocol 
Melting Pot will be speaking at Fall '98 Voice on the Net. 
Those of you planning to attend will have the unique opportunity to hear 
first hand what the different proposals are all about and a chance to 
interact with the people who are helping to drive the industry forward.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Meetings Notes from IP Telephony MoU Meeting in Denver on July 28th

The following are the meeting notes from the IP Telephony MoU which
were submitted by Carl Ford. 

The Meeting in Denver reviewed several documents describing the
requirements for a standardized CDR. The documents compiled the issues and
concerns of the contributors to the MOU and the documents previously
submitted by MIND CTI, CableData, ETSI, and ITXC.

The files presented were zip'ed together and are available for download from 
the IP Telephony MoU website - http://pulver.com/mou/files

The overall objective of the MOU has been to stay protocol agonistic while
blending the new IP based solutions with the legacy of the traditional
PSTN. The fundamental text of the discussion followed the PowerPoint
(See file: ipcdrmou.ppt which is part of 28jul98.zip) The document
suggests a standard structure that can be utilized for all records with the
ability to add optional fields for different services and information.
This could also be utilized by traditional systems to include modules
(which are adjunct records that reference the master record). The term
used for the master record number in the documents was session_id.

In the discussion it became clear that the session_id needed further
elaboration. The term session_id itself caused problems because it has
been used in referencing RADIUS specifications in the IETF (RFC 2138,
2139). Records need unique indicators and all members readily understood
that concept, but traditional usually use one record per service while the
new systems might have multiple services on one record. The concept was
that for traditional systems a unique identifier be available for each
service (as a separate record) but a parent or master unique identifier be
available for tying multiple services together. As discussion continued it
was agreed that transmitting the parent or master unique identifier
indicated a dependency on a protocol and that the reference may be
cascading from (e.g., service 2 to referencing service 1 and service 3
referencing service 2) or a true master reference (e.g., services 2, 3,
etc. referencing service 1). The group agreed that our next step was to
look at the protocols being utilized and ask for the standards bodies to
recommend in the context of their protocol.

All of the standards bodies are having meetings in the next few months and
it was agreed that we send submissions. A committee was formed of Richard
Brennan, Chris Celiberti, Carl Ford, Mitch Mitchell, and Carl Wright to
develop submissions in the style of each standards body. Further
nominations were made for help in presenting the submissions by using
members who participate in the various standards bodies. The following is
a table of the standards bodies and the people asked to consider
presenting.

ETSI Bellcore, Cisco, GRIC, Lucent, Siemens,
TeleDenmark, TransNexus

IETF (includes IPTEL, SIP & SGCP) Bellcore, Cisco, GTE,
Motorola, Portal

ITU (includes H.323 and SG16) Bellcore, IBM, Lucent,
Siemens

NTIA (BAF Committee) Bellcore

MSAF AT&T, Bellcore, GRIC

Open Billing Forum Bellcore, Kenan, Portal

VOIP Forum Bellcore, GRIC, Netrix, TransNexus

It was also agreed that the service providers should drive the MOU?s next
steps in expanding the options section to support services. The group at
the meeting gave a partial list, which is now also displayed in a tab on
the IPCDRMOU. (See referenced file: ipcdrmou.xls) It was suggested that the
service providers be allowed to vote for five services (and the vendors
could vote separately) to determine which services should be expanded. The
list can be expanded (see also the call types tab & forward email from
kgoettler@peakss.com). The categories are possible breakpoints for the 
next meeting which will be focusing on the needs of Service Providers 
which will be held in Puerto Rico in November. (Please see the website -
http://pulver.com/mou for the details regarding the different categories.)

The meeting closed with Richard Brennan of GRIC giving a report on the ETSI
work on Interdomain Billing (see http://www.etsi.fr/tiphon/tiphon.htm).

------------------------------------------------------------------------
The true value of Internet Telephony to Service Providers is APPLICATIONS

The true value of Internet Telephony to Service Providers will become 
apparent only after the next generation of "Applications" become 
available. Companies like eFusion ( http://www.efusion.com ) are 
continuing to develop the kinds of applications which service providers 
will be deploying in the future.

Let's face facts. Short term profits in IP Telephony are in Rate Arbitrage. 

Longer term profits comes as part of the payback for an investment in IP 
infrastructure. Once IP is supported - it will be the wide range of X 
over IP Services which will offer the obvious competitive advantages to 
support IP. By then IP Voice may just be one of the applications which
generates revenue for service providers.

It will be the continuing innovation coming from the IP world which will 
continue to drive the industry forward.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Update on "Building the IP Based Central Office Workshop" at Fall '98 VON

Since the last issue of The Pulver Report, I have been working on the 
format of this workshop - as I wanted to present something which 
provides an opportunity to discuss the issues and the technologies 
regarding the next generations of Central Offices and Local Loop - and 
provide a venue to have a little fun along the way.

In the spirit of having fun - we will be introducing something new
to this workshop. Something which we are calling: "The Network
Diagram Exercise"

"After individual presentations, each group of panelists will be given a
'white board' and movable network elements (hubs, routers, cross-connects,
switches, channel banks, various interfaces, Intelligent Network elements,
gateways, feature servers, base station controllers, cable headends,
multiplexors, etc.). The groups (first service providers, then vendors)
will be asked to construct their vision(s) of the local loop for the
audience, with discussion ongoing during construction. During the wrap-up
session, panel members will discuss the pros and cons of the various
visions and how quickly they may become reality."

This workshop will be presented in three Acts. Act I - Service 
Providers, Act II - Equipment Vendors and Act III - Wrap Up panel discussion.

A copy of the latest workshop schedule is listed below.

*** Building the IP Central Office - September 14, 1998 ***

===========================
Act I - Service Providers
===========================

15 minute presentations on Central Office/Local Loop Architecture and Issues:

US West, AT&T, MCI, Stickdog Telecom, Level 3, isen.com
The Network Diagram Exercise

==========================
Act II - The Vendors
==========================

15 minute presentations on Central Office/Local Loop Architecture and Issues
Cisco, Ascend, Stratus, Soliant, 3Com, Sonus, Lucent, Nortel and VocalTec
The Network Diagram Exercise revisited 

================================
Act II Wrap up Panel Discussion 
(all participants)
===============================

Discussion topics: What will it take to make this real? Will there be a 
multitude of local loop designs? Are service providers and vendors 
betting on any one architecture? What does this mean for 
interconnection? What does this mean for the end user in terms of 
services enabled? What are the timeframes for building these networks? 
What are the economics?

------------------------------------------------------------------------
What's up with the term "Carrier Grade"?

One of the 1998 marketing trends in the IP Telephony industry which I 
find confusing is the branding of the term "Carrier Grade" by quite a 
large number of the Telecom Equipment Vendors. What I'd like to know is what 
meeting took place within their marketing departments for companies like: 
Ericsson, Lucent, Nortel and Siemens to have to include "Carrier Grade" 
in the product descriptions of the IP Telephony equipment offerings.

Which one of these companies traditional customers would expect to
purchase anything less than carrier grade products?

Now I realize that these companies may be using the term "Carrier Class"
in their product descriptions to distinquish their offerings from the
countless start-ups who clearly are not offering "Carrier Class" equipment.

Maybe the industry just needs to invent a new term. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Nebraska PSC is seeking comment on regulation of IP telephony.

The deadline is August 28 (extended from August 14).

The VON Coalition will be filing a response. Those interested in joining
and/or contributing to the VON Coalition filing should contact Bruce
Jacobs - 1.202.775.3543 or via e-mail: bjacobs@fwclz.com.

The notice, listing the questions that the PSC would like answered can
be found at: http://www.nol.org/home/NPSC/c-182521.htm

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Growing up on the Net

Last year the big decision in our family was giving our twin sons a 
computer for their 3rd birthday. The machine we decided on - a P200 with 
48 megs of RAM and a 6.5 gig hard drive seemed to be the right machine at 
the time. (And it has lasted the past year and a half). We also chose 
to connect our kid's computer on the LAN which I installed in my home 
so we could have shared direct access to the Net on the T1 which we have 
in our home.

During the past year and a half it has been amazing to watch the kids 
grow up on the Net. For a while they went through a period of 
'dot-com'ing'. That is putting .com at the end of various nouns and then 
asking to visit the corresponding website. It started when they 
wanted to go to www.video.com and when they went there and saw that the 
website existed the requests continued. In fact this started a 
pattern of follow up requests, such as a visit to www.thomasthetankengine.com.
Ever since then our kids have gotten pretty good at picking out 
a noun adding .com and asking to go visit the site...in most cases the 
website turned out to be available. 

Last November the Dot-com'ing got a little out of hand when Jake started 
introducing himself as "Hi I'm Jake Pulver, this is my brother Dylan 
Pulver, our Mommy Risa Pulver and our Daddy is Jeff Pulver dot com". (I 
kid you not).

On occasion the boys have seen ads on TV for toys that are given away at 
some of our local fast food restaurants. As a result my wife has taken 
them to the drive-thru window just to purchase the toy which 
was being promoted that week. As a result Jake typically wants to visit 
the website of the restaurant in question, for example Mcdonalds.com, and 
has learned to click through the HappyMeal listings to look for the toys 
that he didn't get.

Their obsession for websites and domain names seems to be growing. 
Right around the time of their fourth birthday Jake wanted to go to 
www.happybirthdaydylanandjake.com. I knew that it didn't exist (at least 
I didn't think it did) and Jake seemed pretty frustrated when he noticed 
it didn't exist either. But that got me thinking. Being a Dad of the 
90's who was also slightly obsessed with the net, that evening I visited 
rs.itnernic.net and I tried to register happybirthdaydylanandjake.com but 
found out that I couldn't register domains greater than 23 characters. I 
ended up registering happybirthdaydylanjake.com instead. The best part 
came when it was their birthday I was able to show them their virtual 
birthday card up at http://www.happybirthdaydylanjake.com

These days our kids like to visit nick.com as they enjoy the 'Rugrats' 
and we have been pretty impressed that they are able to navigate over to 
the website promoting the new Rugrats Movie - rugratsmovie.com and are 
able to print out pages of characters from the website which make up a 
coloring book. Nick.com and nickjr.com together with disney.com are a 
great resource with games (mostly Java based) and activities which keep 
the kids busy.

Stay tuned...

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Update: Fall '98 Voice on the Net

It looks like Fall VON '98 in Washington, DC will be a sellout. We may
have to close pre-conference registration as early as next week, so if you
are planning to attend the conference please register quickly.

September is a very busy month in DC and hotel space is limited. If you
have registered for the conference but have not made your hotel
reservations you should do so immediately.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Call for Speakers - Fax on the Net - November 13, 1998 in Amsterdam

Fax on the Net will be taking place on Friday, November 13, 1998 in 
Amsterdam. I am currently accepting speaking proposal from companies 
involved in the IP Fax industry - including IP Fax software and hardware 
vendors as well as IP Fax service providers.

If you are interested in speaking at the event, please e-mail 
your speaking proposal by September 8, 1998 to jeff@pulver.com and put
in the subject: SPEAKER - Fax on the IP.

Fax on the Net will be co-located with IP Telephony '98 which takes place 
November 11-12 in Amsterdam.

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pulver.com 1998 Conference/Workshop Calendar

Sep 14-17 - Fall '98 Voice on the Net - Washington, D.C.
( http://pulver.com/von98/fall98 )

Oct 19/20 - Internet Telephony Solutions for the Enterprise - London, UK
( http://www.callvoice.com/ve98 )

Nov 13 - Fax on the Net - Amsterdam, Netherlands
( http://pulver.com/fax98 ) and ( http://www.firstconf.com/ip )

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for future issues would be greatly appreciated.


Jeff Pulver Tel. +1.516.753.2640 
The Pulver Report Fax. +1.516.293.3996
August 24, 1998
(c) 1998 pulver.com, Inc. http://www.pulver.com/reports

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