Verizon Business and Avaya have expanded their joint-offerings for VoIP and contact center capabilities, and Sprint Nextel has spelled out their unified communications strategy for both wireless and wireline offers.

In the first announcement, Sprint discussed how it plans to enable UC. In a prepared statement, Paget Alves, president of Business Markets Group at Sprint said, "We are converging wireless and wireline technologies into an unprecedented user experience that is fully mobile, flexible, feature-rich, simplified and cost-efficient." Sprint's implementation of the strategy will hinge on four key elements:

* The Sprint Global MPLS network, which includes support for real time applications.

* Sprint Session Initiation Protocol trunking.

* Sprint Mobile Integration -- integrating Sprint CDMA phones with the UC environment and extending desktop phone capabilities to mobile phones.

* Sprint's collaboration with Cisco, IBM and Microsoft so that the services will work well together.

Our observations: Even though Sprint may be more visible as a mobile service provider, it does have a pretty impressive wireline core network that it kept when it spun off Embarq in May 2006. And Sprint has been providing wholesale VoIP (especially to cable companies) and retail VoIP to businesses for years. So while Sprint's strategy isn't revolutionary, it does serve as a reminder that Sprint is still very much in the VoIP and UC business.

In other news, Verizon Business and Avaya announced that they completed interoperability testing and certification of the Avaya Communication - Manager 5.1.1/SES 5.1.1 and Avaya Communication Manager Branch with the Verizon IP Contact Center and Verizon IP trunking platforms. Verizon Business also has what it calls "an aggressive internal training program" so its support team can help customers "gain maximum benefit from the latest Avaya-based solutions," according to the company's statement. The certification and training are designed to "help customers achieve the biggest bang for their enterprise buck when employing the Verizon-Avaya joint solutions," according to Tony Recine, vice president of solutions engineering for Verizon Business.

Vin LaRocca, president of North America sales for Avaya, said in a prepared statement "Verizon employees have already earned more than 100 Avaya design and technical support certifications. Our relationship with Verizon has grown significantly, demonstrating a level of progress that can only happen when both companies share a joint vision and commitment to the marketplace and their customers."

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Larry Hettick is a principal analyst at Current Analysis.