AT&T has announced a number of VoIP (voice over
internet Protocol) initiatives to draw more corporate users,
despite its own research highlighting concerns over the quality of
service.
AT&T will develop common standards for the technology and an
expansion of its international VoIP remote worker pilot
project.
With its traditional long-distance business under increasing
competitive pressure, AT&T sees internet calling and its
associated products and services as the way for the company to open
doors to new markets and revenue streams.
"We want to sell more bandwidth and more managed services both
in the US and internationally; to facilitate access to data
applications and services," said Jeff Ace, vice-president for
global business development at AT&T.
Part of the company's programme to develop common standards for
VoIP includes allowing its partner companies, such as Intel, Cisco
Systems and Texas Instruments, to test applications and equipment
for VoIP using the proprietary specifications developed by
AT&T. Partners are also working with AT&T to develop a
range of products for the VoIP market, Ace said.
Other AT&T partners include Alcatel, Siemens, semiconductor
maker Broadcom and the network gear maker Nortel Networks.
Outside of the US market, AT&T is targeting only large
multinational corporations and, as part of those efforts, is
conducting a VoIP remote worker pilot project involving companies
with locations in Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia and the UK.
AT&T, which launched the trials in June, said 23
multinational corporations signed up to participate in the
project.
Companies participating in the trial include Air Products and
Chemicals, chemical company BASF Australia, vision care company
Bausch and Lomb, network data services provider Global Exchange
Service and Hong Kong-based telecommunications and electronic
learning product maker VTech Holdings.
AT&T expects to be begin commercially offering VoIP remote
worker services, based on its CallVantage Service platform, in the
first quarter of next year. The company has yet to determine
pricing, according to Niall Hickey, director of communications for
AT&T EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa).
"The companies involved in the trials aren't currently paying
for the service," Hickey said. "Once the trials are concluded,
we'll look at things like usage patterns to help in determining
pricing."
Calling services for remote workers - be they people working
from home or business travellers - will include global
teleconferencing, integration of voicemail with e-mail and the
ability for users to avoid wireless global roaming charges.
According to research commissioned by AT&T and carried out
by Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the biggest draw of VoIP for
corporations (87%) is its ability to reduce the cost of calls,
though questions about quality of service remain a problem.
The issue of quality of VoIP service was overwhelmingly the
primary concern for survey respondents. Furthermore, quality was
more of a concern for those already using or testing VoIP (67%),
than for those who have yet to implement the technology (64%).
"The fact that quality of service is a higher concern for those
who have implemented VoIP would lead us to say that not all of the
kinks have been worked out yet," said Denis McCauley, director of
global technology research for EIU.
Quality problems included transmission interruptions and delays,
McCauley said, but users also feared that the system was not as
fail-safe as its traditional telephone service.
AT&T's Ace said that the technology has rapidly matured and
that quality issues are constantly being addressed.
"If it's on our network, you're guaranteed quality, but it is
more difficult if a company is using another ISP," Ace said. "On
the backbone, there is little congestion; access is where you still
suffer congestion."
As part of the EIU survey, 254 senior executives were
interviewed in Europe (40%), North America (27%) and the
Asia-Pacific region (21%). The survey was conducted in March and
April, followed up by interviews and other research in August and
earlier this month.
Despite concerns about performance, 43% of respondents to the
EIU survey said that they are currently using, testing or planning
to implement VoIP within the next two years, while 18% said they
plan to implement it in the long term.
AT&T is facing "plenty of competition" in the VoIP market
both in the US and internationally, Ace said. Rivals in Europe, for
example, include international hardware and services companies such
as Fujitsu, former telecommunications incumbents such as BT and
localised IT consulting and outsourcing companies such as the UK's
ITNet.
However, in the rapidly developing VoIP market, lines can be
blurred as competitors are also often partners and customers: One
of AT&T biggest competitors, IBM, is also its biggest customer
in Europe, Hickey said.
In the US, AT&T has since March expanded its VoIP services
to 150 markets and expects to have a million customers by the end
of 2005, Hickey said. By year end, the company will add
VoIP-enabled options for users of its managed data communications
and VPN (virtual private network) services and is already testing
VoIP applications for call centres, remote workers and IP Centrex
networks.
Laura Rohde writes for IDG News Service