Business News - Bell Atlantic Offers Gateway Services to Internet Carriers

Posted: 05/2000

Bell Atlantic Offers Gateway Services to Internet Carriers
By Stacy Lane Linkmeyer

Bell Atlantic Corp. (www.bell-atl.com) has announced a gateway service that provides completion of phone calls made via IP data networks.

“The platform will serve multiple Internet telephony carriers, which means you have to segregate and keep track of different carriers’ messages,” said Hardy Moebius, director of business development in wholesale markets at Bell Atlantic. “It allows us to drive volumes up to greater economies of scale and drive the unit costs down.”

This second-generation platform currently is operating in Philadelphia and Northern New Jersey. Termination in Eastern Massachusetts, New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington is scheduled to follow within a couple of months.

iBasis Inc.
(www.ibasis.net) is the first Internet telephony carrier to connect with Bell Atlantic to terminate calls on the new platform.

“Bell Atlantic has quickly established itself as a forward-looking leader, well-positioned to take advantage of the huge wave of voice and fax traffic that is already moving over the Internet,” said Ofer Gneezy, president and CEO of iBasis Inc. in a press statement. “Bell Atlantic decided to work with iBasis as the first carrier on this new platform, because of iBasis’ reputation as a leader in voice over Internet protocol.”