Distributed PBX – a Churn Reducer?

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June, 2003

Distributed PBX – a Churn Reducer?

by Ken Pyle

As I have stated before, even though much of the glamour of the Silicon Valley has faded in the past two years, there are still countless number of companies working on the next break-through product. These companies are planting the seeds for tomorrow’s growth cycle. One company that has been around for a few years and that is evangelizing an interesting concept is Avinta.

Avinta sells a product that is essentially a distributed PBX. From an independent telco perspective, this product could be an interesting way to increase &quotstickiness&quot in the face of competition from other telecom providers. Their product is ideal for the small office, home office and residential applications. With this approach, multiple extensions and auto-attendant functionality can be added through incremental additions of hardware.

One of the Avinta’s main thrust these days is to simplify home networking. Building upon their work in creating an distributed PBX, they see the day where telephone and data traffic live together on the same network, regardless of whether the network is HomePNA (Phoneline Network Alliance), PLC (Power Line Carrier) or Wireless.

They are trying to standardize an architecture that would distribute intelligent devices to each computer or phone location and would serve to split the data from the voice. This box would provide the PBX functions described above, while allowing for driverless connections to the PC. According to Avinta, this approach would greatly simplify the residential home networking challenges.

From an independent telco perspective, Avinta suggest that this approach promises a much easier way to provide home networks for customers than current methods. The distributed PBX functionality would essentially be included with the home networking feature, so the telco could either give this capability away as a new feature or charge a small amount and make great margins.

According to Avinta, they have received a number of high-level endorsements from companies such as Cox Communications, Radio Shack and SBC Communications and they are working through standards committees (ISO HES Working Group) to make this a standard. They are looking for additional endorsements from telecom providers, especially telcos, to move this idea from concept to reality. This is a big challenge, but Silicon Valley built its reputation on big minds thinking and working outside the box to create the next big thing.

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