AT&T Opens IP Telephony Lab to Push Standards

Jim Barthold

AT&T Corp. has thrown open the doors of its vaunted research facilities to expedite interoperable Internet Protocol (IP) telephony standards.

An initial 10 companies, service providers RSL Communications Ltd., subsidiary Delta Three, GRIC Communications Inc., and Network Inc., and equipment vendors Cisco Systems Inc., Clarent Corp., LM Ericsson, Lucent Technologies Inc., Siemens AG, 3Com Corp. and VocalTec Communications Ltd., will work out the IP telephony kinks at AT&T Labs in Florham Park, N.J., and San Jose, Calif.

The work will complement CableLabs' PacketCable IP telephony work, said Sanford Brown, AT&T's global IP telephony director.

"While this is somewhat of a separate thing today, it is our very clear vision that we are going to be working with groups like CableLabs," Brown said.

Participating companies won't be sharing proprietary secrets.

"Voice communications today are pretty much unscrambled, except for some very unique applications like the Department of Defense," Brown pointed out. "This lab is founded on the premise of standards and interoperability."

The work will also be network-independent, Brown added.

"There are applications where ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) makes sense, where twisted pair makes sense, where cable makes sense, where optics makes sense," he said. "The vision of IP telephony is that it's above that. It's neutral to the kinds of physical transport to deliver an end-to-end service."

While the first group of companies has a strong business orientation, the lab's work will not be restricted to commercial applications, Brown emphasized.

"I would offer 's participation as a very real example that there's a strong consumer element part of this," he said.

It is also not a closed party.

"It is open to any companies who are willing to spend time and energy in building interoperable systems so people can build IP communications networks that interoperate," he said. "Companies that are willing to invest time and effort toward making that happen, come on down."