AT&T targets VoIP, wireless services

New offerings, including security and Web hosting, on tap.

AT&T's development road map for the next year includes new and enhanced offerings around VoIP, wireless, security and Web hosting, company officials said last week.

The carrier is readying a new service called Remote Worker that will extend the reach of AT&T's IP Centrex service to users working from home or on the road, says Peggy Sexton, business VoIP product management vice president. The service provides corporate customers with a secure means of using VoIP regardless of where they are, she says, because the IP voice traffic is transmitted over any broadband connection via an IPsec-encrypted tunnel.

Users can download a soft client from Eyebeam to their PC so they can make and receive VoIP calls, or they can use a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) phone from Cisco or Polycom. "We will be certifying other SIP phones," Sexton says.

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AT&T's development road map for the next year includes new and enhanced offerings around VoIP, wireless, security and Web hosting, company officials said last week.

The carrier is readying a new service called Remote Worker that will extend the reach of AT&T's IP Centrex service to users working from home or on the road, says Peggy Sexton, business VoIP product management vice president. The service provides corporate customers with a secure means of using VoIP regardless of where they are, she says, because the IP voice traffic is transmitted over any broadband connection via an IPsec-encrypted tunnel.

Users can download a soft client from Eyebeam to their PC so they can make and receive VoIP calls, or they can use a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) phone from Cisco or Polycom. "We will be certifying other SIP phones," Sexton says.

AT&T contends there is great customer demand for VoIP services that keep workers on the same network using the same call features regardless of where they work. Sexton says an aerospace company that she declined to identify wants to order 1,000 subscriptions for the service. AT&T is testing Remote Worker with customers. Availability of the offering will depend on the success of the trials.

AT&T's VoIP group is also making network architecture changes. Last year AT&T upgraded its VoIP platform to one that supports SIP. This year it is replacing its Siemens Call Control Element server with an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) Session Controller from Lucent.

IMS is an open standard that defines how wireless or wireline IP networks should transport voice and data sessions. It allows a carrier to centralize application servers that can be accessed by all customers.

IMS will let AT&T exchange call control information with Cingular Wireless, Sexton says. This will let Cingular customers "dip into any [AT&T] applications; conversely, if Cingular has an application on their network that an AT&T customer wants to access we can pass call control to them."

Cingular also announced plans to move to Lucent's IMS platform in October.

Customers on Cingular's wireless network or AT&T's VoIP network will be able to access and use AT&T's IP Conferencing and Voice DNA services. The carrier says that next year it plans to add more applications to the platform, including presence, collaboration, document sharing and unified messaging.

Unified messaging is one of only a few enterprise services that the new AT&T has adopted from legacy SBC, Sexton says. AT&T has a unified messaging service, but Sexton says SBC's offering is more robust. The carrier is in the process of integrating SBC's unified messaging application with its network, and it is expected to be available to all customers by the second quarter of 2007.

"It seems that AT&T is taking a conservative approach integrating SBC applications and services with AT&T," says Brian Washburn, an analyst at Current Analysis. "They're taking the old adage measure twice, cut once, to heart."

"This is the old AT&T we know and love, taking its time testing and bringing products and services to market," he says. Not necessarily a negative for customers, but it does make Washburn question how much network, platform and service integration has happened between legacy SBC and AT&T.