Verizon Improves Wholesale VoIP Offerings

Verizon has made three product announcements aimed at bolstering their presence in the wholesale VoIP telephony market:

Verizon Business has announced the availability of a global VoIP Gateway Service for the wholesale market. The service, provided through Verizon Business’ International Partner Products business unit, enables wholesale customers to offer full IP Telephony to PSTN trunking services and global termination of calls through one single, scaleable

The resulting benefits, Verizon officials claim, are “lower operational costs, reduced cost of ownership, competitive wholesale pricing and access to Verizon’s network and
partner relationships.”


With network gateways planned in 12 European countries (and USA gateways
in 45 metro areas), the VoIP Gateway Service is being marketed as offering “global capabilities to wholesale customers, providing them a competitive advantage regardless of their level of core expertise.”

In other words, whether customers are network-based or network-independent VoIP service providers, they can use both their own capital investments in VoIP-enabled network equipment and Verizon Business’ network to sell voice and other
IP-based products.

Henrik Liungman, marketing director, Verizon Business IPS says the launch of the global VoIP gateway service is an effort to strengthen their play within the wholesale market.

         
Verizon Business is also announcing the launch of Hosted IP Centrex in Europe, which they consider “a key component of the new Verizon VoIP portfolio” recently unveiled.

Verizon Hosted IP Centrex is being marketed as a product allowing enterprises to tap into enhanced voice and data applications, described by company officials as “an IP telephony product that offers enterprises a robust, flexibly scalable voice service, including features
such as remote working, click-to-dial, auto attendant and Web-based receptionist services.”

Delivered in a consolidated package hosted and managed by Verizon Business, it does eliminate the requirement for businesses to invest in, and cope with, the hardware and
software maintenance of PBX or IPBX equipment by taking the call control and
end-user applications into the provider network.

A lot of expanding businesses struggle with the decision to invest in new voice communications infrastructure for their new sites and growing user populations, mainly because they don’t want to end up with a sizeable investment in an IPBX and then conclude soon after installation it has already reached its limits.

And thirdly, Verizon Business has announced the launch of Verizon IP Trunking, designed for organizations that have already deployed an IP PBX VoIP product.

The product connects to the Verizon VoIP network and offers a package of services, so customers don’t need to purchase and manage multiple facilities.

Verizon IP Trunking is currently available for customer trials in the UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and the US, and Verizon officials say it will be further expanded in the second half of 2006 to Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

It will initially be available with Cisco Call Manager 4.1.3, to be followed by additional platforms including Call Manager Express and Avaya (News - Alert) Communication Manager 3 in the third quarter of 2006.

David Sims is contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims’ columnist page.

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