Global Crossing last week announced a series of VoIP offerings for business users that range from simple transport to fully managed VoIP over the carrier’s IP VPN services.
Global Crossing last week announced a series of VoIP offerings for business users that range from simple transport to fully managed VoIP over the carrier’s IP VPN services.
The offerings include VoIP On-net Transport, VoIP Outbound, VoIP Toll Free, VoIP On-net Plus and Managed VoIP Services.
These are Global Crossing’s first enterprise IP telephony services, which put the carrier behind international competitors Equant and Infonet and domestic competitors AT&T, MCI and Sprint. All the others have VoIP services for business users, and the majority have offered these services for well over two years.
But while VoIP for businesses is new to Global Crossing, supporting VoIP is not. The company started building its Multi-protocol Label Switching-based IP backbone five years ago using Sonus Networks gear to support packetized voice traffic, says Anthony Christie, chief marketing officer at the carrier. “We were Sonus’ first customer,” he says.
Global Crossing carries 2 billion VoIP minutes per month, Christie says, but the majority of that traffic is from other carriers. Global Crossing hopes that statistic will change over the next few years as more companies use its network to carry VoIP.
This was an important point in the carrier’s restructuring plan filed with the bankruptcy court last year. Global Crossing emerged from bankruptcy in December after Singapore Technologies Telemedia paid $250 million to acquire 61.5% of the carrier.
Now with bankruptcy behind it, Global Crossing is moving forward with new offerings for corporations.
The carrier’s On-net Transport service lets users deploy their own IP PBX gear and transport packetized voice calls over Global Crossing’s backbone for termination in 500 cities in 50 countries. While the carrier just announced this service last week, it has supported enterprise users since last year.
Carecentric, a software development company for the medical industry, has used Global Crossing’s service since June.
“It was time for us to look at new telecom equipment, and we wanted to reduce costs,” says Gene Weiland, director of MIS at the Atlanta company. Weiland deployed an IP PBX and IP phones from Inter-Tel and installed Global Crossing’s On-net Transport service to support 35 remote workers.
Those remote workers, living in cities across the country, use DSL to connect to Carecentric’s IP PBX. This lets Carecentric not only route all calls between sites in the southern U.S., but also lets it funnel calls to the same PBX for additional cost savings.
For example, if an employee in Pompano Beach, Fla., calls someone in Jacksonville, the system automatically takes that call through Atlanta and onto Global Crossing’s network before it’s passed off to the public switched telephone network, Weiland says. This lets Carecentric avoid intrastate charges, which are typically higher than interstate charges.
The other Global Crossing services announced include:
• VoIP Outbound, where the carrier deploys and manages IP PBX gear for its customers. Global Crossing plans to support call termination in 240 countries, up from 50, with its transport service.
• VoIP Toll Free, which will let users route incoming toll calls over the carrier’s IP backbone. Both VoIP Outbound and Toll Free are expected to be available this summer.
• VoIP On-net Plus, which will let customers support a hybrid telecom environment, supporting sites with traditional PBXs and sites that have IP PBX gear. Customers will be able to monitor these networks using the company’s uCommand network performance Web-based tool. This feature is expected to be available by year-end.
• Managed VoIP Services, which will let enterprise users support VoIP traffic on IP VPN links. Global Crossing will manage the customer’s router and IP PBX devices. The service is expected to be available by year-end.
Pricing was not available.
