Voice/data over single IP link cuts business costs

9 October 2002 -- Telia, Stockholm, Sweden, has chosen Cisco Systems and software company Sylantro Systems, to provide the technology behind a new service that will save money for small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs) by using a single IP connection for their voice and data communications.

With the IP-based telephony technology and PBX call control features being supplied by Cisco and Sylantro, Telia customers will be able to use just one connection for all their phone and data links, saving on cabling, maintenance and many other areas of operational expenditure.

Andreas Lang of Telia Internet Services, said, "Like any large telecommunications supplier, we can call upon any number of technology vendors. But Cisco was the obvious choice for this project because its products were right for our customers, it had an excellent working relationship both with us and with our software partner and it is been 100% behind the concept from a marketing and sales point of view."

Cisco technologies will power Telia's SMB service right from the hands of its customers through to the phone company's public switched telephone network (PSTN). Businesses signing up for Telia's service will be offered a choice of three IP phones the Cisco 7960, 7940 and 7905 plus a Cisco ATA 186 analogue telephone adaptor and a Cisco Catalyst 3550 intelligent Ethernet local area network switch.

Communications from the customer premises equipment will be routed through Cisco AS5400 Universal Gateways and onto the public switched network via a Cisco PGW 2200 PSTN Gateway. Sylantro's software, meanwhile, will drive the IP centrex managed telephone services used by customers.

Alban Thurston, IP Voice Analyst, at Ovum said, "This latest announcement by Telia, Cisco and Sylantro reflects Ovum's belief that, after years of trials, the IP centrex market is at long last poised for dramatic and rapid growth. SMEs are attractive targets for such a scalable solution, as, for the first time, it permits mass customisation of service and applications. Ovum expects significant announcements of new IP Centrex services from north American and European operators in coming months."