Oct 27, 2004 12:00 PM,

Qwest officially gets into VoIP termination

By Tim McElligott

Qwest Communications launched an IP voice termination service for wholesale customers this week in preparation for next week’s CompTel/Ascent conference in Orlando, Fla., where it will highlight more products with which it is entering the VoIP market.

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After a soft launch in July, done mostly by word of mouth, Qwest’s IP Voice Termination Service has garnered new wholesale customers and allowed existing customers to leverage its broadband, telephony and VoIP capabilities for terminating voice calls worldwide. Qwest has been doing transport VoIP services since 2001.

"We are responding to the customers who do long-distance business with us. We are seeing a large percentage of them start to migrate to VoIP and we wanted to offer them a seamless way to move across from TDM to VoIP," said Dave Williams, product manager for Qwest’s termination service.

Wholesale customers now can hand off IP voice traffic directly to Qwest. The carrier will transport it across its OC-192 network and terminate the calls to the public phone network. Qwest will manage all the gateway equipment and security.

"We are creating a single pipe into our network and doing all the gateway conversion so our customers don’t have to buy their own TDM conversion equipment." Williams said.

To use Qwest IP Voice Termination, customers need only an IP connection to the Qwest network. The service offers domestic and international termination in more than 250 countries, fast re-route capabilities on Qwest's IP network, session border control for increased security, service level agreements for transport services and around-the clock network monitoring and management.

"We have one of the best national footprints out there," Williams said. "So we are seeing retention [because] people trust us and are satisfied with what we are doing in the long-distance space and are willing to bring their business to us in the IP space as well."

Qwest currently carries 1.8 billion minutes of VoIP traffic per month over its national IP network.