Voxbone Expands With Stealth

Voxbone, a Belgian provider of international VoIP origination services to Net2Phone, large call centers, and similar customers, has joined Stealth Communications' Voice Peering Fabric to enable it to exchange voice traffic directly with other VoIP providers. Voxbone leases international VoIP virtual phone numbers and worldwide origination services via VoIP to organizations in North and South America, Europe, and Asia/Pacific regions. The Voice Peering Fabric (VPF) allows service providers, enterprises, and government agencies to buy, sell, and "peer" VoIP traffic and telephony services. VPF is designed as a private voice Internet and functions as an exchange or meeting point for its members to establish peer-to-peer connections in a secure environment. At current levels, traffic on the VPF is expected to surpass 100 billion minutes, up from 18 billion minutes in 2005. "All telecom traffic is moving off the traditional routes and to IP," says Danny Brier, CEO of Telechoice, a telecom analysis firm. "A lot of this is determined by pricing." As a VPF member, Voxbone can now interconnect with carriers and enterprise to buy, sell, and peer DID/termination services across a private network. Additionally, through the use of the VPF ENUM registry, Voxbone can now send and receive calls with VPF members directly, completely bypassing the public telephone network and the public Internet. The VPF is a distributed Layer 2 interconnection fabric, enabling Voxbone customers to sidestep the public Internet and instead use direct peer-to-peer connections. "This is great for Voxbone because it enables them connect directly to the Internet backbone," Brier says, adding that second-tier firms need such networks to connect to the Internet backbone, while major carriers, such as AT&T, can do it on their own. "This enables us to provide better quality connections and to provide our customers with local phone numbers for 40 different countries," says Rodrigue Ullens, cofounder of Voxbone, adding that the direct peer-to-peer connections provide better quality calls than offered through the public Internet. Quality concerns are among the reasons that some large prospects have stayed with public switched telephone network (PSTN)-based systems rather than switching to VoIP systems, according to Ullens. This enables Voxbone exchange voice traffic directly with other VoIP providers instead of accruing per-minute charges associated with routing customer calls through PSTN. By offering these benefits to Voxbone's customers, they in turn can offer these advantages to their customers, who are business and consumer users, Ullens says. "We are committed to providing our customers with the highest levels of service quality combined with highly competitive pricing," he adds. "Joining the VPF is consistent with both of these goals." Related articles: Optimizing the Contact Center Europe Continues to Lead the IP Charge