* Cisco responds to questions about its commitment to open standards
Last week, we printed a reader’s question that challenged the commitment that Avaya, Nortel, and Cisco have to open VoIP standards. Today, we’ll pass along Cisco’s reply in a prepared statement. According to Cisco,
Last week, we printed a reader’s question that challenged the commitment that Avaya, Nortel, and Cisco have to open VoIP standards. Today, we’ll pass along Cisco’s reply in a prepared statement. According to Cisco:
“Cisco strongly supports standards-based solutions for all IP products and networks. Cisco employees are actively involved in the development and evolution of SIP, not only through our products but by chairing and contributing to several SIP committees. Cisco call control and voice applications products support SIP today.
“Business customers value many things in their communications solutions including the quality of the products, the available support and the success and stability of the vendor. Cisco is committed first and foremost to providing the best, most complete solutions for our customers. We offer a large array of IP phones, with prices starting under $100 to high-end video phones. The majority of business customers choose the mid-range phones to provide business features not yet defined in the SIP RFCs.
“We have a commitment to developing new and innovative functionality. Standards alone usually do not address all the elements of a complete solution; standards also often take time to evolve and become fully ratified.
“Cisco took the lead in developing and deploying Power-over-Ethernet. At the time, there was no standard for PoE, so the Cisco solution was by definition, proprietary. Our solution met customers’ immediate needs and millions of ports of PoE were shipped over the last several years. Today, the industry standard 802.3af is available, although somewhat different from the Cisco initial implementation. We supported that standardization process. Cisco switches and IP phones support 802.3af, and generally provide backwards compatibility with the “pre-standard” implementation.
“SIP is not about cheap phones, it about increasing interoperability. It should also be about a stable and supportable protocol to develop new products and services. Without that it is a series of recommendations that provide no commercial benefit.”
