Level 3 goes Lightyear’s ahead on VoIP

Level 3 Communications padded its wholesale voice-over-IP customer list this week by signing a contract with Lightyear Network Solutions, LLC for Level 3 voice services it will provide to its business and residential customers.

Lightyear will use Level 3's (3)VoIP Enhanced Local service to support its Lightyear XSTREAM products, a suite of services it will sell through authorized agents and representatives. Lightyear also purchased (3)VoIP Local Inbound service.

Level 3 also announced a deal this week with cable provider Charter Communications for its (3)Voice Termination services to complete long-distance telephone calls made by its broadband subscribers as well as its (3)Link Private Line services to facilitate local interconnection.

"The continuing uptake we are seeing in a variety of VoIP services says a lot about the ready state of VoIP and about our network and ability to develop and provision these services," said a spokesman for Level 3.

Lightyear’s service suite includes local, long-distance, data, VoIP and Internet for business and residential users under a single bill as well as its own complete customer care. The company serves more than 200,000 customers nationwide and has annual revenues of $120 million.

Using Level 3’s VoIP Enhanced Local service, Lightyear also can offer local number portability and E-911. The service is a wholesale VoIP solution that enables companies who operate their own switching infrastructures to launch IP-based local and long-distance communications services. Level 3 softswitches pick up the calls and terminate them to the PSTN. It also provides the components required for providing network trunking, local numbers, operator assistance, directory listings and directory assistance.

Level 3's (3)VoIP Local Inbound service supports toll-free VoIP telephony applications with the ability to dial locally and terminate nationally over traditional circuit-switched equipment.

Myrle McNeal, vice president of (3)VoIP Enhanced Local service at Level 3, said that after Level 3 made the decision a few yeas ago not to do traditional voice services, ‘There were certainly times when it wasn’t clear that was the right decision, but the investment over time has really paid off."

Now he calls it a land grab. "There are a whole lot of players trying to get into the market at the same time and I have to wonder if we’re crossing the chasm here," McNeal said. "I am not sure at what point we say that is what is happening, but there are certainly no data points that point in the other direction."

This month Level 3 also announced a 10-year, $1.6 billion deal with Computer Sciences Corporation for IP VPN service, sold its (3)Flex Ethernet service to Callipso to manage its VoIP origination and termination traffic and is supplying a high-performance network to Michigan State University, the University of Michigan and Wayne State University for collaborative research.