Network Computingwww.networkcomputing.com

USA Global Link, Fairfield, Iowa, began as a discounter of international telco services, and is now building out its network by integrating SS7 and IP to support small and medium-sized businesses. Its Global InterNetwork infrastructure will support voice and fax over IP in the second quarter, with plans for an overall business VPN offering. Today, the company offers InstantCall, a click-and-talk Web service for businesses.

Pure VoIP
A new breed of service provider is also in the mix, banking on an advanced, high-speed IP backbone with VoIP as its hot new service. All eyes are on these IP-based providers--namely, Level 3 and Qwest--which have poured billions of dollars into cutting-edge IP backbones for offering enterprises IP-based integrated voice, data and video services.

Level 3 won't yet discuss its plans for the business sector it targets--the Fortune 1,000, retailers and wholesale. But the company stresses that to play in the business world, you have to deliver voice-call quality. "We're not going to announce a 'me too' because this market really needs a single-stage dialing solution, not a calling card or double-stage calling solution," says Level 3's Elliott. "You need to do SS7 interconnection with incumbent LECs, which is something we are focused on."

Level 3 doesn't use compression in its backbone for voice calls, Elliott says. "A packet can travel from one end of the country to another on Level 3's network in less than 90 milliseconds," he says. "That allows us to truly match PSTN quality."

The service provider's network is an ATM core with IP routers. Level 3 uses ATM to manage the QoS elements, and is looking at MPLS as a way to guarantee QoS across a VPN in the future.

Qwest's OC-48, IP-over-Sonet backbone, which spans 130 countries, is nearly complete. The Denver-based company will offer an IP-based PBX integration service for businesses next quarter. "They can then take out multiple private lines and do multiple applications over a single IP service pipe," says Guy Cook, vice president of data products for Qwest, which also sells a mass-market IP voice service called Q.talk.

Cook says Qwest cushioned its investments in the backbone by selling segments of its dark fiber and leasing networks to other carriers--the service provider recovered about 95 percent of its costs.

In the Driver's Seat
Some big corporations are starting to test-drive VoIP with an eye to cutting their domestic and international calling costs, as well as uniting their growing IP data traffic with voice--over one big fat pipe. Most are only making calls within their organizations over a single service provider's private network.

Wang Global in Billerica, Mass., is testing PSINet's PSIVoice over its existing intranet service, also from PSINet. Technicians at Wang Global programmed their PBXes to determine which voice calls go over the IP backbone, and which go over Wang's existing PSTN-based service. So far, Wang Global is making fewer than 100 voice calls a day within the company over PSIVoice, but is ramping up the call volume. "We'd like to eventually have our outside calls also go over IP," says Judy Mathys, senior program manager for Wang Global.

VoIP business services won't just be for reducing the cost of long distance calls. The next phase of VoIP services will be applications such as wireless unified messaging, which will let users retrieve their voice and e-mail messages via their cell phones while on the road, and directory services that enable conference calls to be set up from Web-based directories. All this is in addition to the evolving click-and-talk services that work with other call-center applications.

"Value-added services that use IP are the differentiator," says Jeff Pulver, president and CEO of online consultancy Pulver.com.

Send your comments on this article to Kelly Jackson Higgins at kjhiggins@aol.com.