IN THE NEWS
TeleContinuity and the University of Pittsburgh Sign Development Agreement
February 6, 2004 Rockville, MD -- University of Pittsburgh researcher Dr. Richard Thompson has been contracted by TeleContinuity, Inc. to assist in engineering, testing and implementing a telecommunications system that will support the U.S. public telephone network during a disaster. Development is underway with support from a $1.74 million grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
"TeleContinuity is very pleased to be working with Professor Richard Thompson and the University of Pittsburgh on this vital national program," said Roy Pinchot, CEO of TeleContinuity. "Thompson and the Pitt telecommunications people were quick to grasp how TeleContinuity's unique structure made all business and government telecommunications systems survivable even under extreme disaster situations. We look forward to working with Pitt to make America's government and business telecommunications truly disaster-proof." The system will link the public phone lines - Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) - with the Internet to create a telephone recovery system that can be deployed to subscribers within minutes of a disaster. A reliable, disaster-proof telecommunications technology could save the U.S. economy and companies billions of dollars by mitigating business losses.
"If there has been a disaster, then chances are parts of the public telephone network won't be working, so we need to have alternate ways to put calls through," said Thompson, director of the Telecommunications Program in Pitt's School of Information Sciences (SIS) and professor in the Department of Information Sciences and Telecommunications. "Part of the project is to find the best way, through the public network or through the Internet, to reroute the calls." Thompson and five collaborators at Pitt will help engineer the system. Pitt's SIS building will host one of the four nodes, called a TeleContinuity Point of Presence (TPOP), in the initial prototype network. The TPOPs will interface between the Internet and PTSN and will be fully operational by April 2004. "There will be more flexibility with TeleContinuity's unique system," said Thompson. "It creates multiple ways to get calls through under a network that probably has missing pieces." Part of the system will be controlled by a modified Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP) that improves voice quality by minimizing call delay. TeleContinuity's advanced VoIP technology uses a revolutionary technique created by Thompson and Boonchai Ngamwongwattana, a graduate student in the Telecommunications Program. TeleContinuity has obtained an exclusive license from the University for the use of this technology.
In the event of a disaster, the TeleContinuity system will reroute telephone traffic around network congestion and network failure points by a combination of path diversity, network diversity, and geographic dispersion. The technology will enable callers to reach subscribers by dialing their normal office phone numbers. Displaced executives and staff will be able to receive their office calls on any phone or personal computing device at any location and over any surviving network, as though no service disruption had occurred.
About TeleContinuity
Founded in the wake of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent Anthrax attacks on Congress, TeleContinuity is focused on providing telecommunications assurance services to businesses and government customers worldwide. Positioned as "telecommunications gap insurance," TeleContinuity delivers a seamless, low cost, network-level solution that will restore incoming telephone service to users within minutes of a PBX or telephone company failure, fiber cut, fire, flood, building evacuation, or catastrophic event. TeleContinuity's unique technology will enable users to be reached at their existing telephone extensions -- via any network, any device, and at any location -- as though no service disruption had ever occurred. TeleContinuity's patent-pending and fully outsourced service solution offers customers the ability to immediately resume business operations telephonically following a communications disruption, thereby minimizing, or even eliminating the economic impact that would have resulted from the interruption. TeleContinuity, Inc. was founded by Roy Pinchot, President and CEO, Raul Vera, Chief Technical Officer, and Michael Rosenberg, Executive Vice President. All have extensive backgrounds in telephony, information technology, marketing and sales. TeleContinuity, Inc. is a 2003 winner of The National Institute of Standards and Technology's Advanced Technology Program (NIST-ATP) Grant Competition.
Contact for Information:
Roy Pinchot
Chief Executive Officer
Tel: (240) 453-6235
Email: rpinchot@telecontinuity.com