Firm to blend voice, data traffic

CHELMSFORD, MASS. - Start-up Integral Access is readying equipment designed to lower the cost and complexity of corporate networks by funneling all WAN traffic from a site into a single access pipe.

Not only will this eliminate the need for separate voice and data access lines, but Integral's equipment will also let customers turn up more bandwidth as needed without calling on their carriers to string additional wires.

Integral's offering consists of complementary equipment that sits at customer and carrier sites. Integral will sell the equipment to carriers, which will deploy it at customer sites as part of a managed service. Using the gear, carriers will be able to provision an integrated access service for about half the cost of providing voice and data services over separate lines, according to Integral. The savings could be passed on to customers.

The company plans to introduce its Integral Access System in June at SuperComm '99 in Atlanta.

Integral will face stiff competition from established carrier suppliers Nortel Networks and Lucent, both of which are working on similar products. In addition, Integral must contend with fellow start-up Accelerated Networks, which sells similar products.

Just as Integral gear will combine voice and data technologies, the company is run by people drawn from voice and data vendors.

President and CEO Jeff Wake is the former vice president of international sales for voice and data hardware maker Tellabs. Dave Gunning, Integral's vice president of marketing, also hails from Tellabs, where he was vice president in charge of the company's backbone transport gear.

Brad Noblet, Integral's vice president and chief operating officer, was vice president of development at data vendor Bay Networks. Before he worked at Bay, Noblet served as Cayman Systems' CEO.

Integral's customer gear will connect to local phones, faxes, PBXs and routers. For example, rather than having a T-1 for PBXs and a separate frame relay line for routers, the sites will be fed by one line, Wake says.

The other part of the Integral Access System will be located within the carrier network close to customer sites, in nearby switching offices or in remote cabinets that feed switching offices.

Initially, the link between the Integral boxes will be copper, using technology such as digital subscriber line, Wake says. But the company has plans to support fiber and even wireless connections. Integral boxes will connect to other customer and carrier gear via standard interfaces, such as frame relay, ATM and IP.

Traffic will travel between Integral gear at customer and carrier sites in a proprietary packet format. Once at the carrier site, traffic will be sorted and sent to the appropriate voice or data equipment within the carrier network.

In addition, Integral gear will prioritize traffic and pass along priorities to the carrier core network using emerging prioritization standards such as Multi-protocol Label Switching and Differ-entiated Services.

Integral's technology should be able to handle customer needs with bandwidth left over on the link to provision future services over the same line using the same gear, according to Tom Nolle, president of CIMI Corp., a technology assessment firm in Voorhees, N.J.

For example, a company working on a project with a business partner for a period of weeks or months could have a carrier set up a temporary virtual private network over the line, Nolle says.

The bandwidth and device-management capacity will already be in place, he says.

Pricing and details on the specific interfaces on the boxes will be released in May, the company says.

Integral: (978) 256-8833