Hypercom, Inter-Tel Form IP Carrier Solutions Company

Posted: 12/1999

Hypercom, Inter-Tel Form IP Carrier Solutions Company

Hypercom Network Systems and Inter-Tel Inc., both Phoenix-based, have formed a
joint-venture company targeting the voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) gateway equipment
market. The new company, Cirillium Corp., Phoenix, will integrate carrier-class hardware
platforms, call processing software and a service creation suite to help competitive
carriers offer IP services and to reduce time to market and capital investments associated
with deployment, operation and expansion of those services.

According to a recent study by The Yankee Group, Boston, the VoIP gateway equipment
market is projected to reach $1.61 billion by 2002. Cirillium estimates that upon
formation, it has 10 percent of current market share and is implementing a strategy to
sizably increase that share by 2001.

According to company officials, mass adoption of IP telephony will create a demand for
and be accelerated by three different aspects of end-to-end solutions, all of which
Cirillium is prepared to provide. The first is turnkey business and technology solutions,
such as gateways, call processing, standard support, international signaling, payment and
billing, to enable companies to offer VoIP services. The second is applications that make
use of existing integrated access devices (IADs) and customer premises equipment (CPE)
platforms.

In the third and final aspect of IP infrastructure, Cirillium plans to target deals
with the migration of circuit switching to packet switching. The company will provide a
central office (CO) solution in the form of a suitable replacement for multimillion-dollar
Class 5 switches. By integrating existing products from Cirillium’s parent companies and
those of partners with which the company plans to align, Cirillium will offer CO solutions
incorporating asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), time-division multiplexing (TDM) and IP
technology to replace circuits as the switch to packet transport is made.