* Sprint and Avaya's joint agreement
Sprint and Avaya recently announced a joint agreement for the development and delivery of hosted VoIP telephony wireline and wireless services for business customers in North America. The two companies are joining forces to deliver corporate function integration, hosted IP telephony, and wireless telephony and messaging. Future arrangements will provide for hosted contact centers and customer premises equipment resale, along with Sprint Hosted Messaging, a managed messaging platform that is expected to integrate with and eventually replace legacy voicemail systems.
According to Kim Ganote, Sprint’s director for VoIP and Wireline Integration and Product Development, Sprint’s vision includes fixed and mobile network convergence, wireless integration of communications from the desktop to wireless PCS devices, and mobile enablement to extend applications anywhere to any device.
Wireless services will initially use Sprint’s PCS network, although Sprint plans to take advantage of its in-progress wireless broadband upgrades to offer application services. Sprint’s strategy includes using an all IP network that fully supports all voice and data products, and using IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) to offer session control initially for the wireless network and, according to the company it “will want to leverage what IMS brings in wireless services to wireline services.”
We find three factors about the joint announcement newsworthy. First, although most readers would recognize Sprint for its focus on wireless services, Sprint is actively pursuing a wireline service portfolio. Second, Sprint is positioning VoIP as a step along the way to offer integrated applications that address business functions and not just network services. And third, its convergence vision of a fixed/mobile integration is backed by concrete product offerings like VoIP and hosted contact center applications actually delivered seamlessly over both wireline and mobile (PCS and 3G) wireless infrastructures.
Next time: GoRemote and Skype form a partnership
