3Com Carrier-Grade IP Telephony System Engineered to Replace Venerable PSTN for Traditional Voice Calling; Poised to Dramatically Change the Face of the Telecom Industry

Business Wire, Jan 26, 1999

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 26, 1999--3Com Corporation (Nasdaq:COMS) today announced that its three-tier Total Control(TM) IP Telephony System was designed with maximum flexibility to support the diverse needs of the full spectrum of telecom carriers -- from the smallest alternative service providers to the world's largest interexchange carriers.

"3Com developed a sophisticated system for carriers that could eventually replace the venerable PSTN by providing traditional telephone callers with transparent direct access to an IP backbone network," said Irfan Ali, senior vice president for worldwide marketing and acting vice president and general manager, 3Com Carrier Systems. "The system performs at the highest levels of reliability and scalability so that it can meet the performance thresholds to handle this, the most ambitious of carrier IP telephony applications."

While the 3Com(R) system also supports multiple switch-dependent and independent calling models, the transparent operations mode enables telecom carriers to dramatically change the face of the telecom industry. Transparent operation is designed to offer carriers several critical business advantages over continued use of Class 4 and 5 circuit switches for transport across the PSTN.

Packet technology is better suited for today's multi-service needs for integrated voice, data and video communications, and provides carriers significant reductions in both capital and operating costs. It uses existing bandwidth more efficiently than circuit-switch technology and offers carriers more flexibility for adding new service features and bringing them to market more quickly.

And because the IP Telephony system enables carriers to route calls directly to an IP backbone, the carriers can bypass the local telephone companies, thus eliminating expensive connection and termination access charges.

Total Control IP Telephony System

3Com's standards-based three-tier IP Telephony System includes gateways, gatekeepers and back-end servers interconnected by open standard-based protocols, making it the industry's first carrier-grade system that delivers carriers the performance, reliability and scalability they need to implement IP telephony on a broad scale. In addition, the modular architecture features standard APIs at all three levels to provide carriers the flexibility to easily customize the system for service differentiation.

Unlike conventional two-tier IP Telephony systems which combine the back-end servers with the gatekeepers, 3Com's three-tier architecture separates the back-end servers into a third tier, which enables carriers to scale these databases more efficiently and to locate

Total Control

3Com's industry-leading Total Control multi-service access platform provides telecommunications carriers, service providers, and large enterprises a powerful and complete remote solution, including support for remote access, IP telephony, and virtual private networking applications.

The software-upgradable platform is designed for service reliability, using redundant power supplies and modular application cards to prevent a single point of failure. In addition, its modular architecture supports hot-swapping of interface and application cards so that the system remains live and online, thus minimizing network downtime.

About 3Com

With more than 200 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 large, medium and small enterprises; carriers and network service providers; PC OEMs; and consumers. 3Com -- More connected.(TM) For further information, visit 3Com's World Wide Web site at www.3com.com, or the press site at www.3com.com/pressbox.> Note to Editors: 3Com is a registered trademark and Total Control and More connected. are trademarks of 3Com Corporation.

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