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The PBX Scene: September, 1985

Some Recent Events

You win some...you lose some. Ztel is back from Chapter 11, with a lot of new management and presumably some new money, but almost at the same time, we learn that Oki is dropping out of the large PBX field. The Oki Spectrum 700/4000 is being withdrawn, although the smaller Spectrum 100, called a hybrid system, will be continued. Now I know why Oki hasn't sent me back the BCR questionnaire for this manual.

Supply-side Prosperity continues with trade journal headlines describing massive layoffs from AT&T (24,000) all the way down to the smallest terminal manufacturer in your nearby industrial park. Now that most of the 701/740/301/311 SXS PBXs have been replaced, and the Bell Operating Companies are pushing Centrex harder and harder, one wonders just how many PBX manufacturers can continue to live in style to which they would have liked to become accustomed. The customer has to be doubly careful these days to insure continuing support for his new PBX. If it stops working, and the dealer has gone the way my solar heating vendor went, it may cease to be a bargain.

IBM continues absorbing (or, according to some, being absorbed by) the telecom business. In a complex arrangement, IBM bought into MCI and had MCI take over SBS. Industry watchers are already beginning to suggest that Bill McGowan will become president, if not owner, of IBM, but those of us more technically inclined leave the business stuff to the experts and merely wonder how IBM Mainframes, IBM PCs, Rolm, SBS and now, MCI, all with different kinds of incompatible digital systems, are going to be able to make a unified product line. The saga of SNA may be nothing compared to the work IBM has cut out for itself with this conglomeration.

Fourth Generation Systems

As near as I can tell, a Fourth Generation PBX is one which uses the term "LAN" in its advertising. Just what a LAN is in each specific case is not always clear, and what is even less clear is when the LAN-capability will actually be available for delivery. Some years ago (BCR, Sept.-Oct. 1981), I defined a third generation PBX as one that was designed from the beginning to handle data as well as voice, and took advantage of the low cost of processors and memory to distribute control functions rather than lump them all in one central processor as was fashionable in the 1965-1980 time frame. So far, by my standards, there are no fourth generation PBXs.

But what would it take to make one? In a later article (TeleConnect, Oct. and Nov. 1983), I suggested that a true fourth generation PBX would expand its capabilities to handle image as well as voice and data. That would require the telephone set, which I visualized as looking like a Northern Telecom Displayphone or, later, an IBM PC, using its screen to display pictures as well as text, and adding a camera to encode pictures for sending to the connected party. But, hopefully, something better than Picturephone.

Well, this is beginning to happen, and without help from the PBX designers. A small company makes an inexpensive camera for the Apple Macintosh that copies any photo or drawing into memory, and from memory onto disk. Apple also uses the Mac graphics to code text, type fonts, pictures or whatever into machine storable forms, and anything you can put on disk you can modem off to somebody else.

Other computer companies are working along the same lines, copying pictures and then letting you "edit" them on the computer screen. Laser printers use such graphics to make paper output. Using computer graphics as a bandwidth (or memory) reduction technique may be the way to the future. Once we have a file on disk, we can send it to some other computer. Maybe in real time.

The Datapoint Minix seems to go a step further. The hardware for Minix is a color monitor for an IBM PC; it can display pictures as well as text. It also contains a camera for coding pictures to send to somebody else, presumably also with a Minix monitor on top of his or her PC. The Datapoint ArcNet is the vehicle for interconnection, but presumably a PBX could be tricked up to do the job at some time in the future. There better be some way for Datapoint to do this; you can't run your private ArcNet coax to the far end of the country. You'd be better off with a 64 Kbps clear channel in the ISDN. Somehow, it seems to me that any version of image transmission will be more valuable if it can go through the public network to points distant; we can always stick our head through the office door of somebody just down the hall.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, telephone and data communication is moving ahead. Compaq, considered by many to be the best of the IBM PC clones, has announced the TeleCompaq. This is a combined personal computer and telephone, with a built-in Hayes 300/1200 baud modem and all sorts of support software including electronic mail. It interfaces conventional telephone lines (with power ringing, circa 1880, to activate the ring indicator), and, in a different version, 1A2 wiring to do the keyset bit.

The obvious market for the TeleCompaq is Centrex. Now anybody with a conventional Centrex (or other CO) line can have the ultimate telephone of the future. A complete computer, phone, automatic dialer, calendar, electronic mail station, etc. In the press release Compaq sent me, prices will range from $4195 to $6395. This seems a little high, compared to a conventional Compaq in the $2200-2500 range.

But the plot thickens. Several PBX manufacturers make option boards for the IBM PC that map the PC's output information into their digital format, and carry it away at 9.6 Kbps or faster. Mitel has such a card coming out, ETA 11/1/85. And Mitel is going to market the TeleCompaq in the United States under its own logo as a "SuperStation" on the SX-2000. The obvious question I had to ask was could the Mitel high-speed data card replace the 1200 baud Hayes modem? Or, how can a 1200 baud modem have its whistle be compatible with Mitel Datasets which take advantage of the SX-2000's digital switching matrix? A suggested answer to the second question involved using speed-calling to insert a pool modem, but answering the first question is stickier.

The person I spoke to at Compaq seemed to think the Mitel card would fit right in, but Mitel people are still checking out the electronic mail function, built into each TeleCompaq. TeleCompaq's electronic mail software, by being located in each terminal, can only exchange E-mail with other terminals with the same software, which is not necessarily built into a Superset 7, for instance, or other IBM PC clones. On the other hand, all these other devices can talk to one another using the SX-2000's Datasets. Mitel's Datasets can also let any ASCII terminal communicate with SuperSet 7, or other future data ports using their DLIC 64 Kbps chip.

Well, Mitel and Compaq have just started working together, and a good solution will doubtless be available shortly. But the broader question remains: what should be centralized and what should be distributed? Should electronic mail be a central function that anybody can call up, or should it be distributed, in each terminal, with each terminal requiring compatibility with all E-mail systems it might want to communicate with? Or should the software be located (and licensed) centrally, and downloaded as needed to any terminal?

Study of this problem now, in terms of Electronic Mail, may provide guidance for image transmission in the future. Obviously, every computer manufacturer, software house and peripheral-maker will find his own way to code pictures, hoping to lock out everybody else. We can store a lot on a desk-top's 44 Megabit Winchester, but should we bother?

And how do we get from one terminal to another? Will we continue with modem whistles from the horse and buggy era, or move on to the 64 Kbps dial-up channels promised by ISDN? Or do we lump several T-channels together to go at higher speeds? Almost certainly a 64 Kbps voice channel will be adequate for most data, E-mail, etc, but image can eat all the bandwidth you can give it. In the future, there will be more image algorithms than there are E-mails today. Should these be stored centrally and downloaded to a terminal when needed, or should each terminal have its own image protocol stored internally, demanding the PBX translate to reach an image terminal with a different protocol? Stick around. It's going to be fun.

What's in this Mailing

This mailing includes a our first presentation of the Northern Telecom Meridian SL-100, a large, powerful system. Based on the DMS 100 central office switch, the SL-100 can be a PBX, a Centrex, a toll switch for telco or reseller, or an "all of the above" combination.

The original AT&T Dimension is also presented in the new BCR format and, considering the availability of the Dimension on the used PBX market, some lucky people are due to get a real bargain. Even through the Dimension is a 2-wire analog switch, its software is highly sophisticated and thoroughly debugged. And it can handle data without modems at rates up to 9.6 Kbps. It may be just the right thing, and the price is reported to be right.

Our third new presentation is the Hitachi DX Series. These digital PBXs are quite interesting, and have a wide range of capabilities.

On the upgrade side, we have some new material on the GTE Omni, and the Mitel SX-200 and SX-2000. And the list of acronyms and abbreviations is always expanding.

Finally, the RFP chapter is ready. Greatly expanded from the 9 pages in the second edition, it should provide considerable insight into the process of specifying a PBX and going out for bids.

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