Net2Phone Counterpunches Vonage
By Ryan Naraine
March 8, 2004
internetnews.com
VoIP services provider Net2Phone (Quote, Chart) on Monday announced a two-pronged SIP (define) telephony strategy that includes the rollout of a private label service for broadband providers.
The New Jersey-based Net2Phone plans to add VoiceLine to its suite of telephony products to offer high-speed Internet providers a range of hosted telephony services that can be resold to home or small business users.
VoiceLine will be based on the Session Initiated Protocol (SIP), used to initiate call setup, routing, authentication and other feature messages to endpoints within an IP domain.
The rollout of VoiceLine for broadband providers globally is seen as Net2Phone's counterpunch to the growing popularity of privately held Vonage. In recent months, Vonage has closed two rounds of venture capital funding and inked resellers deals with companies like Earthlink.
Net2Phone plans to market VoiceLine as a complementary service to its PacketCable managed VoIP service both in the United States and abroad. By offering two tiers of service, Net2Phone hopes to differentiate itself by handling all aspect of a cable operator's particular marketing, technical, financial and operational needs.
With SIP signaling for VoiceLine, the service can use edge devices, such as multimedia terminal adapters, to establish and manage voice calls on all types of high-speed data networks. The hosted architecture can be used to centralize the call management, billing and provisioning platform.
The company also announced Monday that The Cable, a service provider in the Caribbean twin-island nation of St Kitts and Nevis will be the first customer for the VoiceLine service. |
