XO Communications Inc. (Booth 717) announced the availability of its termination service for carrier customers that provide VoIP services to businesses and consumers. XO VoIP Termination allows customers to terminate long-distance voice calls to domestic locations in the United States using XOs national IP network and softswitch technology.

XO VoIP Termination enables broadband telephony providers and cable companies to hand over their VoIP traffic directly to XO for termination to the PSTN. With an IP connection to the XO IP network, customers voice traffic will be routed across XOs class of service-enabled network at the highest level of priority. The traffic passes through an XO softswitch gateway and is carried across the XO IP network to an XO softswitch gateway nearest the final destination of the call. The traffic is then converted by an XO softswitch to a format accepted by the terminating local service provider.

This service demonstrates our commitment to VoIP, said Ernie Ortega, president of carrier sales at XO Communications. As the industry moves more toward an IP environment for delivering voice calls, XO is well-positioned to provide the IP infrastructure that allows our customers to take full advantage of VoIP. For more than four years, XO has relied on its own IP network and softswitch technology to transport customers voice traffic, and this expertise makes XO an ideal provider of VoIP-enabling services to our carrier customers.

XO VoIP Termination Service has the following features:

– SIP signaling

– Session border controller for network and application level security

– XO IP network transit via XO dedicated Internet access, Fast Ethernet/Gigabit Ethernet

– Service level agreements for interconnection transport

– Domestic voice traffic termination in 48 states

– 24/7 network management and proactive network monitoring

– Interconnection and usage reporting

XO has one of the industrys largest deployments of Sonus Networks softswitches, which provides an IP based switching platform to support both traditional circuit-switched voice traffic and packet-based VoIP traffic. Since the deployment of the softswitch technology across the XO IP network in 2000, XO has utilized the technology to support all of its customers long-distance voice traffic and currently supports more than 600 million minutes each month.