1. Dr. Richard Thompson, professor and director of Pitt's Telecom Program, recently completed teaching a 44-hour course for the US Army Signal Corps in Fort Gordon, Augusta, Georgia. The course, titled "Voice over Circuits and Packets," was covered classic telephony (from Dr. Thompson's book, "Telephone Switching Systems") and IP Telephony. The course ran from mid-November to mid-December as 11 four-hour lectures, two of which were delivered by video link from the US Army's Reserve Center in Moon Township. The other nine lectures were delivered "live" at Fort Gordon. Dr. Thompson was extremely impressed with the liveliness of the class and the exceptional quality of the 14 students. He is looking forward to even greater interaction between the Signal Corps and Pitt's Telecom Program.

2. Telecontinuity is a start-up company headquartered in Maryland. Telecontinuity recently contracted with Pitt's Telecom Program, in the School Information Sciences, for research in implementing an improved network for Voice-over-IP. The one-year project begins in January under the supervision of Principal Investigator, Professor Richard Thompson, who is director of the Telecom Program. Pitt's SIS Building will house a Telecontinuity Point Of Presence (TPOP), as part of Telecontinuity's initial network. Other TPOPs will be located at Telecontinuity headquarters in Gaithersburg, and at the University of Maryland. Part of the research project will be to implement a procedure for minimizing end-to-end delay of VoIP packets, following up on research that was done in the Telecom Program and for which Telecontinuity has agreed to an exclusive license with the University. Further connecting the company with Pitt's Telecom Program, Telecontinuity has hired two of the program's graduates.