3Com, eFusion team on telephony
The companies announce an alliance to jointly provide telephony applications based on 3Com's Total Control remote access hardware.
Under the terms of the agreement, both companies have agreed to joint engineering efforts to ensure that the e-commerce and business call center applications will interoperate with 3Com's hardware.
3Com will support eFusion's Internet IP telephony applications, including Internet Call Waiting, an application that alerts users to incoming phone calls while they are online, and Push-to-Talk, an e-commerce application.
"Our alliance with eFusion is a natural fit, complementing 3Com's vision of voice, video, and data convergence and pervasive networking," 3Com's senior vice president of carrier systems Ross Manire said in a statement.
3Com in March inked a similar deal with Siemens to deliver voice-over-IP capabilities.
Networking firms continue to launch elaborate initiatives to integrate multiple types of traffic within a single device. Such companies are vying to garner a share of the expected sales of this type of equipment to a variety of Internet service providers and telecommunications carriers.
Some maintain that this market is ready to take off now, while others believe that it will take years of upgrades before use of the technology is widespread.
The companies expect products to be available by the fourth quarter of 1998.