Pleiades Communications

After the MailBot project, Susan and Kino (along with five other telecom friends) co-founded Pleiades Communications, Inc. A large part of our time is currently spent here.

In Greek, a “pleiad” means “a group of seven illustrious people”, hence the name. The Pleiades open star cluster is named after the Seven Daughters of Atlas who were turned into stars. Many UFO watchers think that the Gray Aliens come from the Pleiades, so the company gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “phone home”!

Our two major products are shown below:

The Versapath 2000

The Versapath basically does for the PSTN what a router does for the Internet. Having two T1's and multiple FXO trunks, the Versapath can listen to a phone number and determine the best route to use. Just like an IP router, only using existing phone infrastructure. It also has 2 V.35 ports allowing the connection of external Internet routers, and can include an internal router module.

Software Features:

• Digit Deletion / Digit Insertion
• Automatic Route Selection / Least Cost Routing
• Call Blocking
• DNIS Routing
• Call-Home Capability
• SNMP Management

Drawing on our background in Computer Aided Design and AI, we wrote the Versapath GUI to be CAD based. It even searched for problems, highlighted any errors, and suggested corrective actions. Even Best Buy thought it was the best buy!

The P32mxi

(what it looks like)

(what it does)

Another modular design with multiple trunks, 32 phone lines (FXO/FXS), 2 T1's or E1's, a V.35 port, internal 10/100 router capable of connecting to TDM and ATM networks. The system does Voice over ATM/Voice over IP conversion and includes all the Versapath functions described above.

Important Links

Telsource sells, installs and services Pleiades’ equipment in the USA.

AT&T is the primary user of the Versapath and P32mxi via their DigitalLink program.