3Com Unveils Comprehensive IP Telephony Solution for Service Providers - CommWorks for products and services - Company Business and Marketing

Cambridge Telcom Report, Oct 4, 1999

3Com Corporation Monday unveiled its strategic vision for the newly named CommWorks IP telephony solution for service providers worldwide. CommWorks is a key part of 3Com's overall IP telephony strategy for service providers.

The CommWorks name applies to all 3Com IP telephony products and services. A pioneer in the IP telephony field, 3Com first introduced its IP telephony gateway in January 1998, and by October of that year was shipping its complete, three-tiered IP telephony system. 3Com's solution has captured a top three-market share position among suppliers of carrier-class IP telephony equipment.

"CommWorks is designed to provide a flexible, highly available, standards-based platform to support an array of connectivity and enhanced services as IP telephony moves forward," said Irfan Ali, Senior Vice President and General Manager, 3Com Carrier Systems. "CommWorks offers our service provider customers a seamless strategy for migrating their voice traffic onto their IP-based networks to increase revenue opportunities. CommWorks moves today's service provider closer than ever to the realization of pervasive, converged networking."

As new enhanced services are developed and deployed, they can be seamlessly introduced into the service provider's CommWorks IP telephony network - protecting their investment and removing the need for "forklift upgrades."

Seamless Transition

"3Com understands the service provider's necessity to begin moving towards the next generation infrastructure with minimal disruption to their customers," said Houman Modarres, Director, IP Telephony Product Management, 3Com Carrier Systems. "3Com views the migration towards feature-rich IP telephony solutions as an evolutionary process that will occur over the next few years. The CommWorks strategy outlines a multi-phased, seamless migration path that is completely transparent to the service provider's installed base."

For example, the CommWorks IP telephony solution provides transparent trunking for seamless interconnection of existing infrastructures, such as IP, the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and Signaling System 7 (SS7) network. This allows for transparent delivery of traditional telephony and new IP-based services.

Enhanced Services

As new and existing service providers strive to differentiate their service offerings, it is critical to have the flexibility of a service creation engine to provide them with the tools needed to succeed in the marketplace.

"CommWorks enables service providers to offer universal access to a variety of enhanced services, such as unified messaging, Internet call waiting, pre-paid calling, and others," said Howard Hu, Senior Product Manager for IP Telephony, 3Com Carrier Systems. "The open architecture of CommWorks, with its standards-based APIs, provides a superior solution that enables the convergence of multimedia traffic types and integration with advanced applications from strategic partners."

End users can tap into IP-based enhanced services built upon 3Com's CommWorks solution using a variety of client devices via universal connectivity over the PSTN, cable networks and Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) wireless networks.

Converged Networking

Adhering to the same design goals that produced 3Com's unique, highly flexible, three-tiered architecture for IP telephony, CommWorks establishes a clear migration path to bring cost-effective, revenue-generating features and services to service provider customers - delivering on our promise of converged networking. The following chart outlines 3Com's multi-phase approach for the evolution of IP telephony in the service provider space.

                   The Evolution of CommWorks

                Phase 1      Phase 2       Phase 3       Phase 4
             Enhanced Fax   Universal     One-number
                             Messaging     Follow-me
                                             Service

             Internet Call  CLASS         Directory
Enhanced        Waiting                   Services
Services
Evolution
             Interactive    Centrex       Voice VPN
             Voice
             Response

             Pre/post-paid  Web-based     Web
             Calling Cards  Call Center   Conferencing
             -----------------------------------------

Protocol/       H.323 [LESS TNAN]--[GREATER TNAN] SS7 [LESS TNAN]--[GREATER
TNAN] SIP [LESS TNAN]--[GREATER TNAN] MGCP      Converged
Mediation                                              Network
             -----------------------------------------

Infrastructure/ PSTN/IP       Cable         Wireless IP
 Connectivity                 Telephony     Telephony
   Options
  Evolution     IP PBX        Intelligent   Wireless
                              Clients       Clients

With more than 300 million customers worldwide, 3Com Corporation connects more people to information in more ways than any other networking company. 3Com delivers innovative information access products and network system solutions to enterprises, small businesses, carriers and network service providers, PC OEMs and consumers. FMI: www.3com.com.