Global One Announces Major Expansion of International VoIP Service to Support E-Business - Brief Article

Information Superhighways Newsletter, May, 2001

Global One, a provider of advanced e-business communications solutions, announced at the CeBit trade show a dramatic expansion of its international voice over IP (VoIP) service.

The expansion follows a recent deployment by Global One of VoIP Gateways in several locations in Asia, Europe, and the Americas, as well as a global VoIP Gatekeeper. These new capabilities, combined with the MPLS-based VPN service, Global IP VPN, now allow Global One to provide optimized VoIP distance-free off-net calling to over 220 countries and territories. Global One has uniquely positioned itself in the marketplace with its expanded VoIP service, bringing together the best of breed of its flagship switched voice and VoIP solutions.

Companies in the e-business sector need to constantly increase their business flexibility and speed, attacking new markets and getting closer to customers, partners, and employees, while at the same time lowering unit costs. A successful e-business program depends on a communications foundation that supports more than just IP data. Voice, fax, and video are critical requirements as well.

The expanded Global One VoIP service responds to these needs by simultaneously supporting voice, fax, and video. Business costs are reduced through the convergence of voice and data traffic with best-cost routing capabilities. The enhanced VoIP service is available in 80 countries worldwide, except where restricted by local regulations, and calls can terminate off-net in over 220 countries and territories via the public switched telephone network (PSTN).

On-net calls have no per-minute usage charge, and off-net calls are also highly cost-effective. With guaranteed performance levels, the Global One VoIP service enables companies to lower costs and implement new e-business communications applications that require real convergence of voice, data, and video, such as Web conferencing, unified messaging, and Web call centers, all at economical prices.

The Global One Voice over IP service includes a full suite of features to ensure that both on-net and off-net quality is maintained. The quality of service (QoS) features provided by multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) technology and Global IP VPN ensure a consistently high quality of voice traffic over a converged voice, data, and IP network. The unique traffic engineering capabilities available with the MPLS-based Global IP VPN deliver dependable voice quality and ensure the integrity of data traffic.

Global One has installed Cisco VoIP gateways and Netcentrex VoIP VPN Gatekeeper technology at critical locations on the Global IP VPN service network. Cisco 2600 and 3600 voice gateways are used as CPEs and Cisco AS5300 voice gateways facilitate the off-net call terminations between the VoIP network and the PSTN. NetCentrex adds value and intelligence to VoIP/PSTN networks by providing advanced routing and protocol translation, connectivity between the Global IP VPN network and the Global One switched voice network, call optimization, and security.

"We are proud that Global One has chosen the NetCentrex softswitch and VoIP VPN application as the basis of it's new converged VoIP services," said Olivier Hersent, CEO of NetCentrex. "We are helping Global One to rapidly offer services which preserve the customer's existing voice investments, while building the infrastructure to support a full range of additional VoIP value-added services.

Ongoing management of VoIP with Global IP VPN is simplified with a unique, Web-based management and reporting tool that provides real-time reports of router status, packet loss, latency, and jitter. Customers have the benefits of a fully managed service, plus real-time visibility into their voice and data network performance. In addition, service level agreements cover packet loss, latency, and jitter as well as mean time to deliver, mean time to restore, and network service availability. Post dial delays (PDDs) and voice quality ratings are also included with the service to ensure high quality. Global One also offers similar VoIP services for global frame relay customers with many of these features and integrated on-net and off-net calling.