Leading Internet Telephony Expert Greg Girard From IPeria, Inc. to Propose SIP-Based Interoperability Solution at Spring VON in San Jose, CA

Business Wire, March 27, 2000

Business/Technology Editors

BURLINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 27, 2000

Gregory Girard, chief technology officer for IPeria, will propose a solution to the interoperability problems that plague Internet telephony vendors and network service providers. Mr. Girard will present a SIP- (Session Initiation Protocol) based standard for application servers and softswitches to communicate. This solution will be presented at a meeting of the applications working group of the International Softswitch Consortium (ISC).

The ISC applications working group meeting will take place on Thursday March 30, 2000 from noon to 2 p.m. at the Crowne Plaza Hotel located at 282 Almaden Boulevard, San Jose, CA. A copy of Mr. Girard's SIP proposal will be available on both the IPeria (www.IPeria.com) and ISC (www.softswitch.com) websites following the presentation.

The Internet-based telephony solutions and services market is projected to soon reach $15 billion according to Piper Jaffray. The inability of varying telephony application technologies to inter-operate jeopardizes this growth. Left unresolved, this problem will potentially hinder industry development and force service providers to work with proprietary software that does not interface with their legacy systems.

"We hope to achieve three goals with our SIP-TSI proposal," said Mr. Girard. "First, we want a consensus on the value that SIP offers as a uniform and encompassing application interface for use with softswitches. Second, we want to establish and agree on the requirements that define the SIP interface. Third, we want softswitch consortium members to agree that it is advantageous to move digital signal processing from applications servers to media gateways, eliminating expensive resource duplication in the networks."

With over 15 years of industrial R&D experience concentrating on real-time audiovisual systems for telecommunications systems, and several patents filed, Mr. Girard is keenly aware of the issues affecting the Internet telephony market. He is the co-founder and chief technology officer for IPeria, an IP-based provider of enhanced personal communications services, and a firm believer that a SIP-based telephony service interface is required to enable the industry to move forward and realize its vast potential. Prior to founding IPeria, Mr. Girard worked for PictureTel Corporation, Ungermann-Bass Corporation and Phoenix Technologies, Inc.

About IPeria

IPeria is a leading IP telephony solutions and services company that provides enhanced personal communications applications and a carrier-class IP service platform, through its IPeria Service Node. For NextGen Telcos, CLECs, wireless providers and Internet service providers, IPeria's Service Node provides a modular, data-centric, architecture built from the ground up to support IP-based NextGen applications and the convergence of voice and data network applications. IPeria's enhanced personal communications applications put subscribers in control of their application through the use of an e@ccount. Users of the e@ccount, gain access to their messages through a variety of single access points, including wireline or wireless telephones, standard e-mail clients or standard Web browsers. Privately held, IPeria is headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts. Additional information on the Company can be found on the Web at www.IPeria.com.