AT&T Starts Japanese VOIP Project

TOKYO -- AT&T announced that it has started implementation of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) network at Morinaga Milk Industry, a leading food manufacturer in Japan. The VoIP service is being implemented at all Morinaga’s 73 business locations in Japan including sales offices, branches, and plants. Implementation began in the Kyushu region, and is scheduled to be completed by June of this year.

To minimize the incremental costs of introducing the VoIP service, existing PBXs and telephone equipment is being used without little modification. A SIP server will be installed at the network centre of Morinaga Milk Industry to handle voice data and VoIP gateways, and this will be linked to existing PBXs at each business site. In addition, a DSL network normally used for backup lines for data communications will be used for VoIP services. This means that the customer has no additional circuit cost when installing additional network applications such as VoIP.

With the implementation of this company-wide VoIP system, they will be able to substantially reduce expenses for voice communications, which in the past used external lines for its business locations. Morinaga Milk Industry says that they expect to save US$100,000 annually by using the service.

Morinaga Milk Industry is also considering further cost reductions from expanding the VoIP service to its group companies. Also it has started to study the introduction of IP phones as a next generation phone system to further reduce costs.

“AT&T has extensive experience accumulated around the world in the integration of voice and data. We are confident that this VoIP project, which minimizes additional costs, will contribute to greater corporate efficiency and further cost reduction for Morinaga,” said Norihiko Minato, President of AT&T Japan.

AT&T Corp.