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LignUp FastLign Alliance to Speed Innovative IP Telephony Services to Market

Posted on: Tuesday, 20 September 2005, 06:00 CDT

Level3 Joins LignUp, NexTone, Rodopi, VoIP Logic, CentricVoice, and tekVizion to Reduce Deployment Time and Implementation Costs by Delivering Managed Telephony Services to Service Provider Customers

LignUp Corporation, a provider of Web services-based voice over IP (VoIP) converged communications solutions, today announced the formation of FastLign, an industry alliance working to accelerate the adoption of IP telephony services. In addition to LignUp, core members of the FastLign Alliance include Level3, NexTone, Rodopi Software, tekVizion, CentricVoice and VoIP Logic. Through the FastLign Alliance, the companies will enable service providers to rapidly and cost effectively deliver hosted telephony services, which previously have been prohibitively time consuming and expensive to build, deploy, and manage.

"The FastLign approach to selling licenses and its managed services model is a unique approach to helping VoIP service providers get to market," said William Stofega, senior research analyst, VoIP Services, IDC. "By providing a reference architecture that is already hooked up to the network and ready for business, FastLign solves the age old problem of interoperability by jump-starting the service provider with a turnkey business solution that gets them to market faster. Between the advantages of a proven interoperable platform and the cost advantage of buying over renting, FastLign could significantly lower the current barriers to VoIP service market entry."

Until now, service providers have been required to build IP telephony services from the ground up, integrating often disparate technology and services in order to provide a complete solution. This has created a significant barrier to entry for service providers. With FastLign, service providers can take advantage of best-in-class services and software, which have been integrated, certified, and implemented by a managed services provider. FastLign allows service providers to buy licenses that are pre-integrated and certified that are available in a managed serviced environment that will allow service providers to launch services in weeks instead of months. Key components of the FastLign Alliance include:

-- The jointly developed FastLign reference architecture

-- FastLign certification and testing to ensure interoperability

-- Advantage of buying product licenses from participating technology vendors and their channel partners

-- FastLign-powered service -- hosted, supported and managed by FastLign Operator partners

-- Ability to connect directly to the Level3 worldwide network via FastLign Aggregator partners

"FastLign's structured approach to outsourcing of hosted primary line IP telephony services provides Level3 master resellers with a significant new VoIP services market opportunity," said Craig Schlagbaum, Vice-President of Channel Development for Level3. "This program will give our reseller partners the ability to focus on their sales and marketing efforts while allowing FastLign Operators to run a telco-grade IP telephony service. We are pleased to work with FastLign's best-of-breed, managed services model to create these new opportunities for our master resellers."

The FastLign Alliance

The FastLign Alliance will lead the effort to provide cost-effective services to VoIP providers by providing the network backbone and datacenter capacity for the FastLign-powered services. The alliance will do this through aggregator partners performing the critical function of providing mediated access to Level3's network. FastLign Operators will provide the managed telephony service support and maintenance to FastLign customers. Together, these aggregators, operators, and Level3 will make it possible for FastLign customers to access word-class network capabilities that smaller service providers would ordinarily rarely be able to afford.

The availability of services through aggregator and operator partners is complemented by the jointly developed FastLign reference architecture, providing the essential components for quickly building and delivering hosted telephony services. FastLign Alliance members will promote the reference architecture and will offer FastLign platform components, which will be tested and "FastLign Certified" for interoperability, allowing customers to reduce development cycles and eliminate the interoperability phase of service deployment -- essentially reducing the time to market for these services.

The LignUp Communications Solution will provide the Web services building blocks for developing and delivering hosted telephony applications. By providing a communications solution that includes the LignUp Communications Platform (LignUp Call Director, LignUp Media Server, and LignUp SDK), and hosted PBX, voice mail, unified messaging, and auto attendant applications, LignUp allows service providers to provide an ongoing flow of new hosted applications for their service offerings, increasing their competitiveness and avoiding the threat of commoditization.

NexTone's Multiprotocol Session Controller (MSC) enables the normalization of VoIP traffic and the security of network interconnects for the FastLign architecture. The solution extends the service reach of advanced VoIP applications by overcoming internetworking obstacles such as SIP-to-H.323 internetworking, session border control, far end NAT traversal, VoIP peering and other VoIP connectivity issues.

Rodopi Software's fully Web based and configurable software solutions are designed to automate time-consuming customer acquisition, service activation, billing, and ongoing operations and management processes, enabling FastLign service provider customers to achieve higher service levels and greater profitability by lowering overhead costs and reducing the errors inherent in manual processes.

FastLign Alliance members will jointly promote the FastLign architecture and related services, which will become generally available by January 2006.

"Other industry programs only attempt to certify interoperability of some hardware and software solutions involved with call control and call flow," said Ralph Widmar, vice president for FastLign at LignUp Corporation. "FastLign promotes interoperability between all key solutions, certifying network interoperability with Level3, and provisioning and back office functions from Rodopi. In essence, as the FastLign service provider customer, you are almost immediately ready-to-run."

FastLign Alliance Members Cite Strategic Value to Service Providers

"Today's service providers are looking for a ready-to-run architecture service delivery model that allows them to aggregate the Level3 network, and avoid the complexities and costs normally associated with these capabilities," said Jeff Rothell, CEO of CentricVoice. "Service providers usually hurriedly cobble together multiple networks and various solutions from multiple vendors to quickly enter the VoIP services space. The expensive end result -- after months of hard work -- is that have they have left out key components that are imperative for delivery of a complete solution. FastLign provides the technology and business platform to address these concerns. CentricVoice is proud to join a group of proven VoIP industry players to provide the applications, infrastructure, network access, and datacenter capabilities for service providers."

"NexTone's interoperability with FastLign means that carriers and service providers have a turn-key solution that speeds the development and deployment of robust telephony services," said Dan Dearing, vice president of marketing at NexTone. "NexTone plays a critical role in addressing the interoperability and internetworking challenges that must be resolved in order to deploy these solutions, and tekVizion's certification for interoperability with FastLign solutions from LignUp and Rodopi allows service providers to confidently move beyond the technical and service delivery challenges in order to focus on the business logic and productivity potential of their hosted applications."

"We are pleased to provide the testing and certification services that ensure overall platform interoperability -- along with CPEs and media gateways -- for service providers building hosted VoIP solutions with FastLign," said Terri Griffin, president of tekVizion PVS. "By teaming with Level3, LignUp, and the other FastLign members, we are allowing service providers to streamline and accelerate testing, development, and deployment of high value hosted IP telephony solutions."

"Rodopi's automation and billing solutions provide an ideal solution for the FastLign architecture," said Todd Benjamin, president and CEO of Rodopi Software. "FastLign's certification and testing ensure an interoperable architecture of components. Rodopi's pre-configured service templates and back office applications ensure that FastLign customers will have the provisioning, billing, and automated customer care solutions they need. We are pleased to join with Level3, LignUp and others to bring our collective technologies and business benefits to a growing VoIP service provider market."

"FastLign helps us to further expand on our history of providing a unique set of on demand service offerings, allowing service providers to build and monitor VoIP networks with little upfront capital expenditure or in-house expertise," said Micah Singer, CEO for VoIP Logic. "From infrastructure to applications, VoIP Logic provides a robust set of services for managing and maximizing the effectiveness of complex, multi-vendor networks. We are pleased to join with the FastLign partners to deliver a comprehensive set of managed services that would be economically out of reach for most aspiring service providers."

"Hosted VoIP service providers must have solutions to the challenges of infrastructure investments, related integration and interoperability struggles, and hosted application development costs," said Kevin Nethercott, president at LignUp Corporation. "Furthermore, once services are up and running, providers need flexible platforms for developing services that differentiate them in the marketplace. FastLign addresses these issues and allows customers to leverage the network capabilities of Level3, the billing and management services of Rodopi, the testing capabilities of tekVizion, and the solutions and industry expertise of other FastLign partners. We are proud to work within this field of industry leaders and to extend the adoption of LignUp's Web services based solution as a platform for easy development, enhancement, and differentiation of VoIP services."

About LignUp Corporation

LignUp Corporation delivers a powerful Web services based VoIP communications platform deployed with hosted telephony, voice mail, unified messaging, auto attendant and other innovative Web applications. The proven LignUp Communications Platform is powered by VoiceXML, LignUp Media Control XML (MCTRL) and LignUp Call Control XML (CCTRL), and enables the fast and easy creation of unique, high margin VoIP solutions and services. The 100% software, SIP-based, future-ready LignUp Communications Solution enables existing and emerging service providers to create recurring revenue streams by quickly developing enhanced services for their customer base or community. A privately held company, LignUp is based in Silicon Valley, CA and has offices in Salt Lake City, Shanghai and Tokyo. More information on LignUp can be found at www.LignUp.com.

Source: Business Wire

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