VoIP without IP phones? It's a route that a growing group of equipment makers and service providers believes makes sense. There are trade-offs, of course: Some of the VoIP features unique to IP phones are lost, but leveraging existing equipment, and routing data and voice together, are money-savers.
"We see this as having both a technical and strategic advantage for service providers," says Jeff Gustafson, senior director of corporate marketing at Vpacket Communications, which has developed an unusual voice/data router (VDR) that leverages enterprises' existing phones and private branch exchange (PBX) gear.
Vpacket's VDR can be considered part of the family of integrated access devices that includes IP-enabled routers or IP-PBXs. While most companies have developed IADs that are outgrowths of platforms, Vpacket has created its device from the "ground up" to incorporate a simple, upgradable, quick-to-deploy solution. The company is marketing the device to service providers or integrated communications providers, which in turn sell to small and midsized businesses.
"They are the first ones with this kind of approach," says Larry Hettick, vice president of consulting at TeleChoice. "But Vpacket's not going to be the last, that's for sure. There's a huge amount of interest in this and in VoIP in general, either from carriers or enterprises." Vpacket competes with makers of voice-enabled routers and switches, such as Cisco Systems, and with IP-PBX vendors such as Avaya and Nortel Networks.
Nice and Cheap
Kathy Meier, vice president of marketing at softswitch developer VocalData, says Vpacket's approach is attractive to the "price-sensitive" customer that doesn't want to scrap a lot of existing equipment and buy costly IP phones. Enterprises can use the analogue phones they have, and also integrate existing PBXes and key systems.
"Vpacket allows you to offer IP services to customers without displacing infrastructure. From what I've seen in the last six months, this segment of the market is becoming more vocal and the demand for these services is becoming more important," Meier says. VocalData has announced a partnership with Vpacket, and is completing interoperability testing.
Vpacket, a privately held networking company founded in 1999, launched its series of VDRs in December, and has 30 to 40 customers in trials, Gustafson says.
The VDRs can be installed in small or midsized businesses, branch offices, large buildings or business campuses. The VDRs are placed in the company's telephone closet, just like traditional routers or PBXes would be. Wiring, handsets and local area network equipment can remain, because the traffic isn't travelling over the LAN. Converged voice and data travel over DSL or T1 (1.5-megabit-per-second)/E1 (2.048-Mbps) lines. Each VDR can support 12 to 24 voice ports.
The VDRs prioritise voice packets ahead of data packets, and incorporate a quality-of-service (QOS) measurement and management system. A management server allows the service provider to handle software revisions for all of the VDRs at an enterprise, an easier system than updating individual IP phones. New voice and data services can be provisioned easily, often by customers, through Web interfaces to the softswitch. Softswitches can provide a variety of interfaces, such as customisation of new access via PC or laptop while travelling.
If power fails, the system includes a single backup telephone port that connects to the public switched telephone network, to which calls are forwarded automatically. VoIP phones are useless when power fails.
Depending on the setting, VDRs can save enterprises 74 percent to 94 percent over the cost of IP telephone implementation at present-day IP phone prices, according to Roberta Parker, Vpacket's business development manager. Many experts predict that the price of IP phones, which now cost US$150 to $700, will drop eventually, but Vpacket estimates that even if phone costs fall to $250, its VDRs still would be 45 percent to 85 percent cheaper than IP phones.
"We see this approach as having both tactical and strategic advantages for service providers," Gustafson says. Providers can offer more services, while both providers and users save money. "And it's not a stopgap product. This has a very long life," he says.
