AireSpring Inc. (Booths 313-315) announces it has become certified as an independent responsible organization or RespOrg and as such now has access to the 800 Service Management System (SMS/800) to reserve and set up routing information for toll-free numbers.

While many resellers rely on their underlying carriers for number assignment and routing, AireSpring decided to take the step, says Daniel Lonstein, AireSprings senior vice president of marketing, noting it has taken the company about six months to secure the certification and bring on trained staff to manage the system.

There are a lot of cool things you can do within the SMS database to route traffic, says Lonstein. You can do percentage allocation. You can do geographical routing amongst multiple carriers.

As an example, he says, AireSpring may put in T1s from three separate carriers and route interstate and in-state calls on separate providers based on the lowest rates. That least-cost routes to some degree the toll-free traffic, he says.

Lonstein adds another perk of being an independent RespOrg is AireSprings ability to respond to clients disaster recovery requirements. A lot of companies after Sept. 11 want to have disaster recovery options available. They dont necessarily want to sign contracts with two or three or five carriers. They can just sign one with us, he says, noting AireSpring can use multiple underlying carriers either at diverse locations or at a single location to ensure redundancy.

If a carrier goes down, we can go into the SMS database and it updates every 15 minutes, so we can reroute the traffic so there is no loss of service experienced, he adds.

Lonstein says becoming an independent RespOrg is one of the ways AireSpring is trying to differentiate itself from other service providers. Its the value-add we can offer over and above just price multiple networks, independent RespOrg, the ability to have carrier diversity and one bill, one point of contact, he says.

While AireSpring has low prices available, Lonstein says, By having these advanced feature sets, the agent doesnt have to offer the lowest price out there. There is a feature set and an advantage. It allows them to raise their commissions as well.

Commissions for toll-free services go up to 45 percent; rates for inbound start at 1.588 cents per minute.