Telstra launches IP telephony

Telstra has partnered system integrator Dimension Data and networking giant Cisco to launch an IP telephony service the company claims as one of the first of such a magnitude anywhere.

Paul Geason, data solutions and sales managing director at Telstra, said the open standards-based offering was on a par with, if not more ambitious than, similar services offered by major carriers in the US, Europe or Asia.

'Unlike many of the proprietary packages on the market, Telstra IP telephony offers choice by allowing customers to use compatible equipment from a range of vendors rather than being wedded to a single technology provider,' he said.

Geason said the company 'could not do it all by itself' so had partnered Dimension Data to do the system integration work and Cisco to provide hardware. A small US company, Broadsoft, would carry out the overall hosting of the servers in the network. 'DiData is a key partner in building the support for the solution,' he said.

The offering will initially be available to large Australian government and business customers but the plan is to drill down to SMBs with less than 50 seats soon and eventually market it globally, he said. 'We believe it is an outstanding offering for SMBs,' Geason said.

Geason admitted that one main reason for the push into IP telephony was to counter the erosion of revenue from other offerings, as competition in a freer market drove costs down.

He denied that the service would cannibalise other parts of Telstra's market. 'This is a new market for us,' he said.

IP telephony could boost productivity and cost savings while 'transforming' company communications, Geason said.

He said Westpac Banking Corporation was deploying the offering, connecting about 30,000 handsets at around 1000 locations across Australia. The project was scheduled for completion December 2004. 'IP telephony is a significant growth opportunity for Telstra as more large businesses and government are looking to use it not as a way of making cheap voice calls but as a tool to reduce the cost associated with managing separate communications networks,' Geason said.

Steve Nola, CEO at Dimension Data, said the system integrator would 'actively' market Telstra IP telephony to its existing enterprise customers. 'Dimension Data is also seeking to deploy Telstra IP telephony within our own operations in Australia because we recognise the benefits of creating a single voice-and-data network,' Nola said.

Fleur Doidge travelled to Coolum as a guest of Dimension Data.