Driving VoIP

SBC won a significant VoIP contract with Ford Motor. The RBOC will design, implement and manage an IP telephony system for more than 50,000 employees at Ford’s headquarters and 110 other facilities. Published reports pegged the value of the deal at $100 million over three years. The project is SBC’s largest IP telephony deployment to date. Ford will own the infrastructure and manage its data network while SBC provides phone services as a managed application. Most of the sites, including the headquarters, will be switched over to about 90% IP phones. Some of the phones will run on Wi-Fi wireless LANs. http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/0921sbcreadi.html

SBC won a significant VoIP contract with Ford Motor. The RBOC will design, implement and manage an IP telephony system for more than 50,000 employees at Ford’s headquarters and 110 other facilities. Published reports pegged the value of the deal at $100 million over three years. The project is SBC’s largest IP telephony deployment to date. Ford will own the infrastructure and manage its data network while SBC provides phone services as a managed application. Most of the sites, including the headquarters, will be switched over to about 90% IP phones. Some of the phones will run on Wi-Fi wireless LANs.

https://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/0921sbcreadi.html

Representatives of wireless telephone carriers planning a telephone directory service told a U.S. Senate committee that legislation to protect their customers’ privacy isn’t needed because their plan already does. Privacy advocates and some senators questioned, however, whether wireless carriers would protect customer privacy in the long term, without rules in place about how they handle the release of customer phone numbers. Six of the seven largest wireless carriers in the U.S. are moving forward with a plan to band together to offer a wireless directory, or 411, service. The directory could be available as early as 2005.

https://www.nwfusion.com/edge/news/2004/0921wirelcarri.html

Alcatel made two acquisitions to bolster its presence in a couple of hot markets. The French telecom giant announced plans to acquire eDial, a maker of Web-based collaboration software for businesses, for $27 million. EDial makes a conferencing and collaboration server based on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). The server allows enterprises to host Web-based conference sessions in which users can share documents, and communicate via IP voice, video and chat applications. The product is also used by carriers to provide WebEx-like online conference services. Alcatel also announced plans to acquire Spatial Wireless, a U.S. supplier of packet-switching software for cellular networks, for $250 million. Spatial Wireless develops software for multimedia switching systems that support current digital wireless systems and 3G wireless networks.

https://www.nwfusion.com/edge/news/2004/0917alcatbuys.html