Avaya to place VoIP phone contract orders with Taiwan suppliers

Taipei, Dec. 6, 2004 (CENS)--Avaya Inc. of the U.S., a world leader in communication solutions for enterprises, plans to release contract orders for voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) telephones with Taiwan suppliers.

Some local information technology (IT) and communication equipment makers are hot candidates, including Hon Hai Precision Ind. Co. Ltd. (the world's No. 1 maker of barebone PCs, connectors and TV game consoles), Inventec Multimedia and Telecom Corp. and ZyXEL Communications Corp.

Wang Chih-ping, Avaya Taiwan president, said that currently most of his company's products are made in the U.S. and some low-level VoIP phones are supplied by companies in mainland China. Wang confirmed that Avaya's headquarters in the U.S. assessing the feasibility of releasing VoIP phone orders to Taiwan.

Industry sources said that Cisco has released contract orders to Hon Hai and Inventec Multimedia for VoIP phones and Bluetooth cell phones; while 3Com has expressed willingness to place contract orders with a Taiwan company.

Avaya is a spin-off from leading American telecom company AT&T with technical support from Bell Lab. Avaya's IP communication technology currently leads global counterparts.

Some 90% of the global telecom lines still adopt exchange systems but more and more will use IP systems, according to Wang. In the coming five years, Wang estimated, the global IP telecom equipment market would grow at an annual rate of over 20%, making it one of the few high-tech sectors to maintain a high growth in the future.

Wang stressed that IP telecom technology has been increasingly popular as more and more customers actively asked for IP-related services in the past two years.

Avaya is the No. 1 solution provider in the enterprise IP/private branch exchange (PBX) system markets in Taiwan, mainland China, South Korea and India.