Portal services: An evolution of voice features

Broadband access will not only change the character of data transmission an d user platforms, it will have a profound effect on voice features. In the converged network, the feature developer has new fools to control configura tion, activation, and content delivery to the end user. These new resources , available from converged telephony endpoints, include Web pager, electron ic forms, interactive graphics, bookmarks, and Java* applets. The Internet and Broadband Enhanced Telephony project, sponsored by Lucent Technologies' Switching Solutions Group, has established a demonstration environment tha t shows how to develop these new interactive features. The goals are to est ablish frameworks that will speed feature development, demonstrate the feas ibility of Internet-enabled telephony services in an open-source environmen t, and integrate these services with video and high-speed Internet access i n a broadband endpoint. This paper discusses the demonstration environment, the new user platform hardware and software, and the roles of converged da ta and programmable switches. The paper also presents an overview of one of the initial features developed-a conference portal.