iBasis, Telecom Italia Sparkle Announce IP Migration

iBasis, a KPN company, and Sparkle, the international wholesale arm of Telecom Italia Group, have announced the successful migration of their bilateral voice traffic to IP. Both companies believe they are the first to accomplish full migration to IP of their international voice bilaterals in compliance with guidelines developed by the i3 Forum, an independent industry alliance created to promote an industry-wide transition of voice and related services to Internet Protocol.

Prior to completing the migration, both companies validated the implementation of Premium Voice services over managed IP interconnects in a series of extensive trials which proved that the SIP-I protocol could effectively guarantee advanced call features such as CLI, international roaming, ISDN Data, fax and ISUPv2.

Sparkle intends to pursue migration to IP of most of its international voice bilaterals in order to further gain operational efficiency, enhance its product set that today is limited to international narrow band voice, fully exploit IP and end-to-end IPX capabilities, and leverage its NGN Class 4 platform, which Sparkle introduced in the European wholesale arena in 2005.

“We at Telecom Italia – Sparkle are very pleased to have completely migrated to IP our international bilateral with iBasis,” said Francesco Armato, CEO of Sparkle. “Telecom Italia and iBasis have long been leaders in using IP for international voice service, and we are now continuing to lead the industry being the first to fully migrate bilateral traffic to IP in compliance with i3 forum guidelines. This is a significant achievement for Sparkle and iBasis and for the international telecommunications industry.”

“We’re thrilled to have achieved this migration with Telecom Italia,” said Paul Floyd, chief operating officer of iBasis. “Telecom Italia is leading the way, but there is widespread demand among fixed and mobile operators to migrate international Voice bilaterals to IP in order to take advantage of the efficiencies and potential of IP while maintaining very high quality of service. Our Premium Voice service over managed IP offers that capability. This approach is also a great step towards the IPX hubbing model which will allow mobile and fixed-line operators alike to easily monetize all kinds of traffic, including chats, video conferencing and presence through standardized IP interconnects.”