NTL offers IP Multimedia Service

Targets integrated voice, video, email and IM packages at larger organisations.

NTL:Telewest last week unveiled its IP Multimedia Service, offering companies a telecoms collaboration package for video calls, phone calls, voicemail, email and instant messaging.

Alistair McKinnon, senior product manager at NTL:Telewest Business, said, “This service is targeted at larger firms and public sector customers. We are offering a range of packages, from basic telephony through to feature-phones. But the package of most interest is the one which supports instant messaging, presence, video and multi-party conferencing.” This package costs £16 per user per month.

Chris Barnard of research firm IDC said, “Companies that are moving to IP telephony increasingly see that it’s not just about replacing the functionality of the traditional PBX [private branch exchange] system, but to move further and add functionality to voice in the form of IP applications, specifically around collaboration and presence.”

NTL said the IP telephony call and voicemail services have extensive phone directories and presence indicators, to give staff a continually updated live list of colleagues’ status. Users can connect from any location using either an IP phone or through a voice/video softphone application and can display live PC-to-PC pictures using web cameras through an internet connection secured through IP VPNs.

The managed service uses Nortel kit including its Communication Server 2000 carrier VoIP superclass softswitch, together with a Multimedia Communication Server 5200. Users link their LANs to the NTL:Telewest core IP network. NTL said the service has been tested in-house and with customers at 50 locations.

“For the best end-user experience we would check out customer LANs, but 100Mbit/s LANs full duplex with quality of service [QoS] would normally be OK. We connect into their LAN using IP VPN because this has Muliprotocol Label Switching [MPLS] QoS,” said McKinnon.

Prices start at £10.50 per user for a basic telephony system supporting unified messaging and email delivery of voicemails through a web portal. McKinnon said a mid-range package costs about £12 with a multifunction feature-phone capability.

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