Voice over frame relay is becoming more than just a niche market.
While voice over frame relay has been around in some form since 1990, vendors supporting the technology have been mostly start-ups offering products that did not always meld easily into a managed enterprise. Now, vendors that made their names with private T-1 network gear are entering the fray.
Newbridge Networks, Inc., which is just about to ship its first voice over frame relay multiplexer, has plans to incorporate voice support into other Newbridge gear over the next year.
Separately, rival Ascom Timeplex, Inc. has introduced its first multiplexer that supports voice over frame relay.
User interest in voice over frame relay is primarily financial. The technology reduces the need for a separate private voice network or a virtual private network service for intracompany phone calls. The cost of voice over frame relay has been estimated to be as low as half a cent per minute compared to 5 cents per minute for bulk deals with long-haul carriers.
With that savings in mind, Newbridge executives said they plan to introduce voice over frame relay in phases over the next year. First, the company later this month will ship the 3608 MainStreet Packet Access Mux, which supports voice over frame relay.
The 3608 allows remote locations to tap into the corporate network, mixing all frame traffic from that site onto a single permanent virtual circuit (PVC). The device provides a link between a remote site and a central site that has a router or switch to direct traffic among other sites.
The mux compresses voice traffic so it takes up about 8K bit/sec and supports a wide-area frame relay link up to 256K bit/sec. The 3608 sits between the remote site router and the frame relay line, so all traffic flows through it.
The 3608 is in beta trials but should ship this month. Pricing has not been set.
The firm will follow up with enhancements to its 3600 and 36120 packet/frame relay switches that will give special treatment to voice. The enhancements in-clude a direct interface between the switches and phone key systems or PBXs.
Not to be left out, Ascom Timeplex has added the Synchrony AD-10/FR frame relay voice gateway. In addition to turning voice traffic into frames, the AD-10/FR also performs call routing, which eliminates the monthly expense and management headaches of multiple PVCs.
Instead, all voice calls from a remote site would travel a single PVC to a centrally located AD-10/FR, which would act like a voice switch, directing calls to the destination site on the appropriate PVC.
The base unit, available now, costs $4,945.
Ascom Timeplex: (201) 391-1111; Newbridge: (703) 834-3600
