Denwa Communications' voice services package offers service providers the ability to add premium services to their pool of revenue streams, paying a monthly per-subscriber fee.

by Wayne Kawamoto [October 26, 2001]

Denwa Communications ("denwa" means "telephone" in Japanese) recently released its Internet Protocol (IP) voice communications service that is based on Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) technology. According to the company, the service extends SIP-based Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) capabilities to a wide range of customers, from Internet Service Providers to retail users, and may offer ISPs the opportunity to exploit a value-added service that may be offered to customers that is low in cost and offers toll-quality voice communications.

The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) standard, which was adopted in 1999, is rapidly gaining in popularity as a call control protocol for IP telephony. Many IP telephony vendors and service providers are currently building new products and services based on the SIP standard because of its scalability, interoperability, and manageability.

According to Denwa, its SIP-based services offer the following:

Basic call features—Local, local toll long distance, international, dial around, toll free, call waiting, caller ID, Call forward, 3-way calling, return, call, call transfer, conference calling, automatic call back, call pickup, and more.

Instant messaging and integrated Web communication tools—Users may send text messages in real-time via Internet service agents. They may also place phone and conference calls directly from a PC contact database or e-mail address book by pointing and clicking, or dragging and dropping.

Follow-me/find me network presence capabilities—Consumers may access the real-time status of all members within their own virtual Communities of Interest (COI)—allowing them to identify when someone is on the network, what devices they are using, where they are calling from, and more.

End-user self-service provisioning—Customers may modify their accounts, enable or disable calling features, maintain contact lists, and manage individual customer preferences, all through a Web interface. Billing and account information is processed and updated online.

End-to-end system management—Business users may have access to extensive back-end system management, analysis, and reporting tools-including network performance and inventory, quality of service, dynamic routing, rate schedules, call accounting, and customer tracking. Denwa can configure a Web-enabled portal to act as an enterprise's Operations Support Systems/Business Support Systems (OSS/BSS) interface between corporate employees, industry partners, and service providers.

According to the company, Denwa can also offer its customers the following:

1. immediate service activation through subscriber self provisioning
2. three levels of billing (agent, ISP, and end subscriber)
3. a full suite of voice communications features
4. the ability to select carriers for quality and cost optimization

"ISPs now have an effective way to build substantive demand for bandwidth by delivering voice as a feature to their customers," says Holger Dietze, Denwa Communications CEO. "While they [the ISP] will realize additional bandwidth revenue, they will also see revenue from voice that was previously left on the table."

Dietze believes that the 'killer app' that Internet service providers have been looking for over the better part of a decade is voice. "ISP's and broadband providers have been looking for the magic bullet application to drive bandwidth sales," says Dietze. "As it turns out, SIP is the tool that these companies have been looking for to provide what their customers demand: voice communications with the advanced features and reliability levels they have come to expect at a significantly reduced cost."

"Over the next year SIP will increasingly become the method of choice for VoIP and other Internet services," says Kim Niederman. "Our partnership with Denwa places LongBoard at the forefront of this important service trend." LongBoard, Inc., an Internet telephony application platform provider, based in Santa Clara, Ca., is one of the participants in Denwa's SIP initiative.

Denwa's service currently uses technology from LongBoard, Nuera, Mediatrix, and Pingtel from the Partner Initiative.

Additionally, Denwa is planning on technology contributions from iPeria and Voyant. The iPeria and Voyant offerings will add Unified Messaging and Conferencing to Denwa's suite of services.

Availability and pricing
The Denwa IP voice communications service is available now.

Denwa currently prices the service at $19.95 per month. This includes basic service, all on-net calling (SIP to SIP), and enhanced features such as presence management (soon to be supported by SIP based Windows XP), and unified messaging.

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