Motorola will announce two voice-over-IP gateway offerings today that should help heat up the prospects for transmitting voice calls over data lines. These new dedicated boxes extend Motorola's Vanguard line, which currently dominates the voice-over-frame relay market, and represent an alternative, at least in some cases, to the open server-based systems from Vocaltec and Netspeak.
Motorola's low-end offering is the VIPR Vanguard. About the size of an external modem, it can handle up to four phone lines and is priced starting at US$1,900. Inside the box is a Motorola DSP and host processor which are used to break the voice signal into packets and perform compression. All the software that runs on the box is also by Motorola.
At that price, Motorola claims that when the device is used in an international branch office it will pay for itself in just a few months. A domestic branch might take a little over a year. Also, the Vanguard is significantly cheaper than a PC server-based gateway which start at around $8,000.
However, says Motorola's Sean Parham, server systems still make sense for value-added applications such as call-center integration. Motorola will continue to offer Vocaltec's gateway as part of its IP telephone product line.
The company's high-end offering is the 6560 MProuter, capable of handling multiple T1 spans and intended for use by carriers or at a company's headquarters. It is priced at $19,700.
With these two offerings in its product portfolio, Motorola has helped turn voice-over-IP from an activity best suited to dedicated tinkerers to one that any IS manager can now deploy. However, as Cisco and others eye this market, Motorola may find that it will have to compete on software - adding functionality such as call accounting and conferencing - and not just price and performance.
