Alcatel IP Soft Phone Wins Network World Award

March 6, 2002 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Alcatel (alcatel.com), a developer and builder of communications networks, announced on Wednesday that its product, the Alcatel 4980 soft phone earned a World Class Award in Network World magazine’s soft phone benchmark test (nwfusion.com).

The products, including equipment from Cisco, Avaya, Siemens, Mitel and Swyx, were tested entirely from an end user’s perspective, says Alcatel. The Alcatel 4890 was selected based on criteria such as performance, features, installation, ease of use and configuration.

“In the features realm, this product supported 37 of the 41 features we deemed necessary for use in a corporate setting. Alcatel's product also topped the ticket in terms of installation, ease of use and configuration,” says the report.

The Alcatel 4980, says the company, provides a software telephony interface integrated into the user’s desktop or laptop PC, and linked to a telephone. It is designed for use either as a soft phone, providing the entire voice communications interface using voice-over-IP capabilities, or in association with any other phone, extending office phone capabilities into environments with fewer features.

The 4980 soft phone, says Alcatel, provides a range of telephony features and dialing capabilities, including corporate phonebook directories, phone set management and voicemail, enabled by the PC. It’s open architecture allows it to integrate with popular workgroup applications and creates a tool for virtual call center agents, telecommuters and remote office workers.

"According to a new study by research firm Cahners In-Stat/MDR, there are 78 million `remote and mobile' workers in the U.S.," says Tom Wilburn, senior vice president, Alcatel North America enterprise business. "Alcatel sees a need for companies to provide effective communication support for the growing mobile workforce. Besides retrieving e-mails and transferring documents, road warriors can employ the Alcatel 4980 as a `virtual phone' on their notebook PCs to satisfy all their telephony requirements."