Alcatel launches converged telephony box

By MICHAEL FOREMAN

French telecoms manufacturer Alcatel has launched what it claims is the first converged communications appliance to arrive on the New Zealand market.

The OmniPCX Office combines a PBX (private branch exchange) supporting up to 236 conventional or internet protocol (IP) phones, with web sharing, email and fax services in a single box.

"This sort of technology is normally only available to large companies but is now in the domain of small businesses," said John East, Alcatel enterprise country manager.

"Normally you would have to install separate web caching, fax, voice and email servers."

Mr East said the OmniPCX would allow users to migrate to IP-based internal phones when they were ready, but it also supported conventional analogue lines. The main advantage of IP phones for internal use is that they allowed a single cable and server infrastructure to support both voice and data, but analogue lines were still used for cordless handsets.

The OmniPCX also included unified messaging system software running on a Linux-based operating system, which would route internal emails over a local area network.

At the moment a lot of companies are using multiple dial up connections for email, which means internal messages chew up bandwidth, Mr East said.

Mr East said OmniPCX systems would be priced according to their configuration but a mixed analogue and digital system for 8 users would cost less than $10,000 including handsets.

Mr East said demand for the OmniPCX would help Alcatel boost its turnover from $120 million to a projected $200 million this year.

Mike Currie at Wellington-based PBX supplier GDC Communications said the quoted price of the OmniPCX compared well to the cost of buying separate servers.

"You would have to add installation costs to that price, but you could spend $10,000 on a web proxy server alone," he said.

He expected United States-based converged telephony manufacturer Avaya to launch its similar a 100-voice station IP Office system in Australasia this month.