Attach base stations in place of telephones

Requires: Coupling the PSTN and the Internet telephony worlds,
i.e., unification of voice and data communication

Driven by a number of features:

• emergence of high speed digital paths (ISDN, xDSL, ...)
• emergence of integrated traffic
• ``phone'' programs for placing long distance calls across the internet, loss of traditional income sources
• exploding Multimedia computing market
  • therefore, nearly all new PCs have audio input and output (high-end ones even have video input and output)
  • OS and other support for audio is becoming standard
  • more and more multimedia information being broadcast, pointcast, ...

Enabled by Voice Gateways:

• Li Wei, (M.S., 1994),Gateway between Packet and Switched Networks for Speech Communication, KTH/IT
• Lucent's voice gateway was developed with MiBridge (http://www.mibridge.com/)
• ...

LAN(s) provide the local interconnections between the various types of networks
===> no more PBXs and perhaps no more traditional telecom interfaces!