Nortel unfolds VoIP service road map

By Jim Duffy, Network World
February 24, 2003 12:09 AM ET

. What's this?

OTTAWA - Nortel last week rolled out a broad initiative geared toward getting service providers to use its latest packet telephony equipment to deliver new services.

At the heart of the plan, dubbed Succession Services, is technology designed to support services that promote user mobility and integrate multiple devices and media - such as e-mail, cell phones, home telephones and PDAs.

The initiative includes a service road map, product enhancements and expanded co-marketing program. The road map shows carriers how to stimulate enterprise and consumer demand needed to generate service volumes.

One destination on this road map is a new Nortel offering that supports managed services called Succession Voice over IP (VoIP) VPN. VoIP VPN brings together branch offices and telecommuters onto a single telephone dial plan, and lets service providers manage a company's voice network for them.

Related Content

VoIP VPN is hosted on Nortel's Succession Communications Server 2000 and 2000-Compact softswitches. VoIP VPN lets companies reduce ongoing operational expenditures by up to 25%, the vendor says, citing internal research.

In Succession
A rundown of Nortel’s packet telephony service packages.

•	Succession VoIP VPN lets service providers manage a company’s voice network and integrate other data services.
•	Succession Centrex and Succession Centrex IP provide evolution to packet telephony with line-by-line migration and more than 200 business features.
•	Succession Personal Communications Manager enables Web-based, end-user- programmable call-screening, routing and management.
•	Succession Multimedia and Collaboration combines voice, video, and text media in one communication session. Services include Web-based video calling, instant videoconferencing and presence-based collaboration capabilities.
•	Succession Internet Voice provides voice over broadband.
•	Succession Primary Voice provides a regulatory-compliant primary voice service set for new market entry and competitive service differentiation. Features Class-5 residential voice services equivalent to public switched telephone network.

Click to see:

VoIP VPN is the latest in a suite of Nortel offerings that enable managed services. The others include hosted multimedia and packet voice services such as Succession Centrex/Centrex IP, Personal Communications Manager, Multimedia and Collaboration, Internet Voice and Primary Voice.

To help carriers combine these services into bundles, Nortel announced several softswitch enhancements under the Succession Services plan:

Adding H.323 interfaces to support direct packet interworking with H.323 IP PBX systems and gateways. This will enable converged VoIP VPN services to be offered to the growing enterprise base of IP PBXs.

Expanding support for Session Initiation Protocol to enable direct packet interworking with SIP-based enterprise PBXs or gateways. This will broaden the market for VoIP VPNs, Nortel says.

SIP extensions that integrate Succession softswitches and Succession Interactive Multimedia Server to enhance the multimedia features carriers deliver to existing phones.

SIP proxy capability to allow multimedia traffic to cross enterprise and public switched telephone network domains, and carrier boundaries. The ability to add multimedia services or personal call management to existing telephones could increase carrier revenue by up to an average of $18 per business line and $15 per residential line, Nortel says, citing internal research.

Nortel also has expanded its co-marketing program, MarketForce, to include the results from a detailed market research study designed to understand specific buying patterns. The data is intended to strengthen carriers' business planning and pricing analysis, and let them accelerate new service revenue generation with promotional and lead-generation campaigns.