Lucent Technologies Announces General Availability of Internet Telephony Server Family and First Commercial Customer

Business Wire, Oct 22, 1997

MURRAY HILL, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 22, 1997--Lucent Technologies today announced the general availability of its industry-leading Internet Telephony Server (ITS) family for business customers and service providers. The company also announced that Compaq Computer Corp. will provide its PC server as the first platform for the enterprise version of the ITS and that Transfer Technologies Inc. will be the first customer to use the enterprise ITS on a commercial basis.

Lucent's ITS and ITS SP let customers send and receive real-time voice and fax messages over the Internet or intranet. Both products let customers lower long distance costs, while they ease the congestion on phone lines, and provides a cost-effective platform for integrating voice and data. For voice quality assurance, the ITS and ITS SP can fall back to the public switched telephone network if the performance of the intranet or Internet falls below customers' expectations.

The enterprise version of the ITS is available in a turnkey package, which includes a Compaq ProLiant 2500 Pentium server, Microsoft(R) Windows NT(R) operating system, administration via Windows NT screens, ITS software, telephony interface cards (analog, T-1/E-1, INS 1500) from Natural Microsystems, analog digital signal processing (DSP) boards from Analogic Corp., and compatibility with the H.323 IP telephony standard.

"By designing a standards-based enterprise solution, we are providing our customers a reliable and cost-effective package for deploying IP-based telephony services," said Denis Aull, vice president of Internet Communications at Lucent Technologies. "For example, the ITS compresses voice to 10 to 12Kbps - that's only using 16 percent of a T-1 line, leaving 84 percent free."

"Lucent chose the Compaq ProLiant 2500 server as the first platform for delivering telephony services over IP networks because of the reliability and fault- tolerance of the system," said Aull. "Compaq and Lucent have worked together to deliver a reliable, high-performance solution for customers deploying IP telephony applications."

Transfer Technologies Inc., a pre-paid calling card company, will be the first customer to use the ITS on a commercial basis.

"In the pre-paid calling card business, Internet telephony is an excellent way to reduce costs," said Peter Galdi, president of Transfer Technologies. The company plans to deploy the ITS in its Las Vegas, London and Mexico City offices. "After evaluating several Internet gateway products, we chose Lucent's ITS because it offers the best voice quality, fax reliability and total cost of ownership," said Galdi. "With Lucent's help, we are building a worldwide network encompassing dozens of gateways."

Lucent has already announced several controlled trial customers for the ITS, including ABC Buecherdienst GMBH, an on-line German bookseller; KIH, a Kentucky on-line service provider; and Kanematsu, a large trading company with offices in Japan and the United States. The ITS SP is also being trialed with service providers such as ICG Communications, MCI and AIMQUEST.

Pricing for the enterprise ITS ranges from $2,500 to $4,000 per port. The ITS and ITS SP are available in targeted international countries.

For more information on the ITS and ITS SP, customers can visit the Lucent Technologies Web site at http://www.lucent.com/internet.> Lucent Technologies (LU) designs, builds and delivers a wide range of public and private networks, communications systems and software, consumer and business telephone systems and microelectronics components. Bell Laboratories is the research and development arm of the company. For more information about Lucent Technologies, headquartered at Murray Hill, N.J., visit our web site at http://www.lucent.com.

CONTACT: Lucent BCS PR

Stephen Loudermilk

908/953-7514 (work)

732/432-0862 (home)

sloudermilk@lucent.com

or

Laurie Dobosz

630/224-4196 (work)

847/698-0848 (home)

ldobosz@lucent.com