VSNL touts wholesale VoIP

After assembling the pieces of a global network, VSNL International is now moving to strengthen its standing as a leading provider of wholesale VoIP services, this week announcing a deal with Skype to provide termination for its Skype Out service.

Owned by the Tata Group, the largest private sector company in India, VSNL International includes the data operations of Tyco Global Networks, purchased when that firm was going through bankruptcy, VoIP pioneer IXTC and Teleglobe, the Canadian carrier once owned by the government there and later by BCE. Using the undersea cable facilities the Tyco purchase brought as well as Teleglobe’s service expertist and IXTC’s VoIP legacy, VSNL International last year handled 21 billion minutes of VoIP traffic and now counts 415 telcos among its wholesale customers, said Mike Corso, product manager for voice peering services.

“We are the biggest in the world,” he stated.

While the company also does retail VoIP, primarily in India, its wholesale business is booming, Corso said, with growth in both the pure-play VoIP segment, with companies such as Skype, and in the managed VoIP offerings from traditional carriers serving international customers.

“Through the different acquisitions, we have been doing VoIP for eight years now,” he said. “We have a network that is not legacy TDM, it’s hybrid – we have our legacy TDM customers but our switches are all IP-enabled.”

That means any legacy switches are front-ended or back-ended with VoIP gateways that enable them to take in VoIP traffic. In addition, VSNL deployes session border controllers for SIP access points or VoIP access points to handle native IP traffic. The company is also in the planning stages of a next-generation network, Corso added.

One area of growth, not surprisingly, is in India, but VSNL International is also seeing major growth in other developing nations. “Every knows at this point that IP is the way to go,” he said. “So our growth is tracking the growth in different parts of the world.”