TELECOMMUNICATIONS: NEW INTERNET VOICE GATEWAY STANDARD TO INTERFACE WITH >TX PHONE SYSTEMS.

Summary:

At a recent meeting in Turin, Italy, staged by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), experts from a number of companies and organisations involved in multimedia communications over the Internet, started work on an important new Internet standard which will permit control of voice gateways between conventional telephony networks and the Internet.

The new standard will permit control of gateway devices that pass voice, video, facsimile and data traffic between conventional telephony networks and packet based data networks such as the Internet. Connections through such gateway devices allow callers using a normal telephone to make long-distance voice calls over the Internet.

Use of packet-based networks in this way is generating intense interest from telecommunication carriers and service providers who see the opportunity to offer new services based on the integration of facsimile, voice, video and data. Industry analysts estimate that international telephone traffic over Internet gateways will grow from a mere 1% of all traffic in 1997 to 25% by 2003 with a market value of USUSD7 billion.

Work on the new standard was begun at the September 1998 meeting of Study Group 16, responsible for the...