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Sprint Taps Lucent to Intro Enterprise IP Voice
TMCnet Contributing Editor
We've got big news from Sprint today. The telecom giant tapped Lucent Technologies to launch Sprint (News - Alert) IP Voice Connect, its new VoIP offering targeted at enterprise customers.
Sprint will deploy Lucent's Hosted VoIP Solution for Enterprises through Lucent's Global Network Operations Centers. Sprint's IP Voice Connect integrates voice and data communications on a single IP network, while it supports integrated and next-generation applications. The deal is a pretty big win for Lucent, as it is the company's first large Tier 1 service provider customer it signs.
The VoIP Minute Watch had the opportunity to ask Joel Whitaker, Sprint's product marketing manager, why Sprint chose Lucent for this project. "Sprint is partnering with Lucent for two reasons. First, they are more like additional Sprint employees than partners in our work together to get the product to market," explained Whitaker. "Their expertise in voice and data communications, especially VoIP made them a great choice for us. Second is their investment and relationship with Broadsoft. Broadsoft is a true carrier-grade VoIP platform and Lucent's implementation is secure, reliable and fully featured."
Sprint IP Voice Connect seems to be a good option for businesses wanting to benefit from standards-based session initialization protocol (SIP)-based VoIP capabilities, while still integrating current investment in legacy voice systems. With Sprint IP Voice Connect, business administrators will be able to migrate sites or individual users one at a time, allowing a scaled implementation at any pace.
Asked Whitaker why target the enterprise market. "Sprint is really targeting any size customer, from a small company with one location to a nationwide enterprise with hundreds of locations. Sprint IP Voice Connect offers the features, simple migration path, workforce flexibility and mobility tools to make just about anyplace a workplace," he explained. "Sprint has found that there are some particular customer implementations that may find IP Voice Connect of special benefit. These include sites that are new construction (greenfield) as well as those with current voice infrastructures that are end of life or where the customer is considering a large capital outlay. Sprint IP Voice Connect reduces the need for that large capital expense as we host the voice features in the network."
The new offering features simultaneous ringing to multiple phones, unified messaging and abbreviated dialing. Company administrators will be able to manage and configure new and existing accounts and manage virtual dial plans on demand with a full-featured Web-based administrator portal.
Sprint currently offers service level agreements (SLA) to measure VoIP quality items such as jitter, delay and packet loss. The telecom also offers SLAs for site implementation, mean time to repair and proactive outage notification. Sprint IP Voice Connect is a carrier-grade service built with internal survivability (multiple connections between partners along with redundant data centers). Customers may maintain communications even during an outage or disaster since the customer's phone service is housed in the network rather than a physical location and no longer dependent on that physical location's availability.
Sprint Nextel
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Johanne Torres is contributing editor for TMCnet and Internet Telephony magazine. To see more articles by Johanne Torres, please visit Johanne Torres' columnist page
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