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Jim Barthold
8x8 Inc. is shifting its focus from long-range Internet Protocol (IP) video telephony over broadband networks to near-term IP voice telephony.
As part of the shift, the Santa Clara, Calif. company introduced a four-line voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone adapter for cable and asynchronous digital subscriber line (ADSL) modems that can offer a "salad bar of solutions" for broadband telephony providers and subscribers, said Michael Noonan VP-business development.
The 8x8 module comes off the cable modem and connects the incoming broadband network to the twisted pair wires that lead to the various telephone extensions on the premises, allowing a consumer to maintain four separate simultaneous telephone calls.
"Now you're not limited by telephony," Noonan pointed out, noting that with the unit "a telephony-caliber cable modem becomes possible."
Noonan said the four-portal unit, which will initially cost about $400, will allow cable operators to offer four phone lines for about one-quarter of the cost that subscribers pay today. Subscribers can then choose a phone line or IP address - or both - through the unit.
Although 8x8 views the unit as a way to "distance ourselves from would-be competitors and ally ourselves with cable modem vendors," Noonan emphasized that, as a semiconductor vendor, the company's chips are available to all manufacturers.
8x8's technology, he said, is "PacketCable on a chip and putting it into a DOCSIS modem" and part of a process 8x8 has been pursuing with CableLabs.
Noonan admitted that 8x8's focus, especially in narrowband, has been video telephony. This is not the way to enter the broadband market, however, where "footprint is the issue," he said.
"We've been doing the hard job first," he said. Now, he said, 8x8 would "evolve something into the mass market that AT&T wants to put on the side of every house or inside every cable modem."
The unit's location, he said, could be inside or outside a residence, although, "it's no easy task to put sophisticated electronics on the side of the house." Running off the cable modem, the box "truly does become a gateway" and a home local area network (LAN), he said.
"There is an opportunity with PacketCable to reinvent telephony (and) do away with the way people use telephones because you don't have the same barriers anymore," he said, noting that the initial effort would lead to more sophisticated communications methods to TVs, PCs and other in-home appliances, including video phones.
"We now have the chip and we're putting it in plastic," he said, noting that 8x8 is sampling the chips that are part of CableLabs DOCSIS 1.1 effort.
Restricting its efforts to VoIP, Noonan notes, is financially sensible, as opposed to focusing on the niche markets that video telephony would attract.
"We want to make money," he admitted.
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