Business Services Industry

Telia Tests IP Telephony With SIP From 3Com; 3Com And Telia Co-Operate To Develop New IP Services

Business Wire, July 13, 2000

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

STOCKHOLM, Sweden--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 13, 2000

The 27,000 Telia Employees In Sweden Can Now Be Reached Directly At Their E-Mail Addresses With IP Telephony Via The Internet

3Com Corporation (Nasdaq:COMS) today announced that Telia, the leading telecommunications company in Sweden, has started trials of its SIP (session initiation protocol) solution.

Telia and 3Com expect that SIP will have as significant an effect on the development of the Internet as the HTTP protocol has had so far. The solution is simple. Calls to a SIP address are automatically sent on to the addressee's regular telephone via a SIP gateway. For example, one person can move between different places and easily have his or her calls redirected to each new location as they move around. This service can be used for permanent relocations from one office to another, or for when the employee is moving around the office to other desks and conference rooms. Other services are under development.

Each Telia staff member will be given an SIP address, which means they will be using their ordinary e-mail address instead of a telephone number. In order to call a Telia employee via the e-mail address, the person making the call has to have an SIP software or an SIP telephone his or herself. 3Com will supply the SIP servers and IP telephones used in the tests.

"Co-operating with such an innovative and leading telecom operator as Telia gives 3Com a valuable experience in developing leading solutions within our area," says Bo Fjelkner, major account manager, responsible for the project at 3Com Nordic.

SIP is an open protocol designed for initiating, managing, and terminating interactive communication, such as voice, across the Internet. Service providers will be able to develop and integrate services and applications such as unified messaging, Internet-based call centres and different multimedia services, faster and more easily. The new standard was presented at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in March and has since then gained a wide acceptance and support among tele operators and service providers.

For more information about 3Com's SIP telephony, please visit http://www.3com.com/technology/sip.> About Telia

Telia is the leading Scandinavian internet and communication company challenging technology to liberate you in life and business. In 1999, Telia's sales totaled SEK 52,121 million and the number of employees was approximately 30,600.

About 3Com Corporation

With more than 300 million customer connections worldwide, 3Com Corporation connects more people and organizations to information and each other in more innovative, simple and reliable ways than any other networking company. 3Com delivers web-enabled solutions to consumers, small- to medium-sized business sites and network service providers. For more information, visit 3Com's web site http://www.3com.com/pressbox.> 3Com's end-to-end SIP-enabled IP telephony solution includes the Total Control(R) 1000 media gateway, which connects SIP devices to the PSTN; the CommWorks(R) 4220 SIP proxy server; the CommWorks 8210 unified messaging system; and 3Com's SIP-enabled Ethernet telephone. The solution provides end-to-end voice-over-IP services, with the additional benefits of smart client devices, including a PDA interface and a robust end-user feature set. All components in the solution are SIP RFC compliant.

Note to Editors: 3Com, Total Control and CommWorks are registered trademarks of 3Com Corporation. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.