TalkingNets announces VoIP deals

BALTIMORE (Telephony)—During ISPCON Spring 2001 today, TalkingNets announced deals with Telseon and Cogent that will allow the telephony applications service provider (ASP) to provide softswitched-based voice over IP (VoIP) services to small and medium-sized businesses.

Through its agreement with Telseon, TalkingNets will extend voice services over Telseon’s Gigabit Ethernet network. Broadband service providers that leverage Telseon’s IP network will have access to TalkingNet’s advanced voice services, allowing the service providers to add voice services to their existing portfolio of data services.

TalkingNets will use Cogent’s nationwide optical IP network to provide next-generation voice services to smaller businesses. Cogent’s broadband service providers will have access to TalkingNet’s business-class telephony services from existing co-location points, eliminating the need for expensive private circuits, according to TalkingNets.

These relationships are representative of a new class of all-IP metropolitan area network providers, said Tony Surak, executive vice president, sales and marketing, for TalkingNets.

“We have voice-enabled their networks so that their ISP customers and BLEC customers can more easily get access to our voice services, so they can be sold ultimately to the end-user businesses that are subscribing to these fiber broadband pipes,” Surak said.

“This is one of the first applications to be delivered over these broadband pipes in the metro area, and it happens to be voice. When you look at the infrastructure and what we’re delivering, it’s really one step closer to being the alternative … to the ILEC in that market.”

While the relationships help TalkingNets sign up and interconnect IPS more quickly, they enhance quality of service (QoS), Surak said.

“The relationships allow us to interconnect with their ISP customers who, in turn, would be our channel partners in delivering and selling the service to the small and medium businesses that these ISPs serve,” he said. “It helps increase the amount of ISPs we get signed up and interconnected to our network, in a much faster fashion than if we didn’t have this ability in place.

“It also helps the QoS standards and techniques we require our channel partners (ISPs, BLECs, and fixed-wireless providers) to deploy in their network. By having this interconnect through companies like Telseon and Cogent, it makes that implementation a much smoother process.”

Surak said the alternative would be to use interconnects from ILECs, which he described as an “inelegant fit.”

“It would take longer to provision and is a lot harder to manage overall once you have it in place, and you’re not really leveraging the fact that this is all IP,” he explained. “The more you can make the infrastructure at the local loop and in the back-haul become IP, the closer you get to the vision of the all-IP infrastructure being the replacement to the TDM architecture that’s out there.”

Because TalkingNets is a certified CLEC, ISPs can get to market much faster with voice services working with his company than though other channels. Surak said this is important because data providers are under competitive pressure to provide additional services.

“An ISP can get into the voice market in as little as 30 days, and they don’t have to go through all the regulatory requirements to become a [certified] CLEC,” he said. “They do not have to file tariffs with the PUC, they don’t have to deal with the collecting and understanding the tax situations for their jurisdictions, and they don’t have to negotiate interconnect agreements with the ILEC.

“These are very long lead-time items that require a very specific expertise, and we deal with that burden, which is one of the advantages of working with a telephony ASP. It’s all time to market.”

The deals with Telseon and Cogent affect the Denver metro area. Surak said the company would announce additional markets in the eastern U.S. this spring and has plans for 25 markets in place in the next 12 months.