NetSpeak Corp, purveyor of the WebPhone internet phone system, has signed a strategic alliance with ACT Networks Inc to jointly develop Internet Protocol telephony applications and products. As part of the deal, ACT snapped up $2m worth of NetSpeak’s initial public offering, which gives ACT about 2.3% of the outstanding NetSpeak shares. Specifically, ACT will incorporate Net ‘Speak products such as voice compression, routing, system-level management, codec level management, dynamic buffering, and so on, with ACT’s own voice compression and call control systems to run on ACT platforms. And by the year-end, the two companies hope to deliver gateway servers that bridge frame relay, asynchronous transfer mode and IP networks with the internet and the public switched telephone network. Separately, at this week’s Spring Comdex show in Atlanta, Boca Raton, Florida-based NetSpeak will be launching the core technology that’s at the heart of its WebPhone system for telcos, other service providers and large corporations to build their own robust multimedia networks over IP. It will be especially attractive to telcos, says the company, because it will contain multiple levels of embedded redundancy to help them offer service level guarantees. NetSpeak got its initial public offering of 2.4 million shares, all new, of common stock away Thursday at $8.75 per share. The shares closed the day on Wednesday at $9.125 on trading volume of 725,700. The company has granted the under writers options to purchase an aggregate of up to 360,000 additional shares to cover over- allotments, if any.
