In the eight years since its original launch, the Fibernet's London Carrier Ring service has provided a simple way for carriers to interconnect on a wholesale basis, using rapidly provisioned, low-cost, scaleable SDH circuits on the Carrier Ring between their voice switches. More than 100 leading international operators currently exchange in excess of 30 billion switched voice minutes per year on Fibernet's Carrier Rings, cementing their position as Europe's pre-eminent hubs for trading international voice traffic.
The new ipLCR service has, at a stroke, ‘VoIP enabled’ all of the current LCR members, facilitating their own plans for migration to SIP based IP traffic, and opening up the LCR community to a whole new market of providers of IP based voice services. This brand new service has created huge interest amongst the carrier community.
Fibernet say their ipLCR provides a gateway service between traditional TDM carrier network technology and the new world of VoIP and that more than one hundred Carrier Ring members will immediately be able to enjoy any to any connectivity, (TDM to TDM, IP to TDM, TDM to IP and IP to IP) helping them to realise new business and revenue opportunities. Current customers who choose to use the ipLCR will do so without incurring any increase in the cost of the service. In fact, costs for traffic converted from TDM to IP will actually be lower than TDM to TDM, effectively removing barriers to VoIP market entry and greatly increasing and extending the marketability of current services.
Charles McGregor, CEO, Fibernet says, "the aim of the ipLCR is to offer our carrier customers an attractive opportunity to realise new revenue streams and, in turn, offer their customers and suppliers a competitive IP interconnect service." He adds, "we have spoken about migration to IP based voice for a number of years. We recognise that the infrastructure needs to be in place to deal with next generation services right now and we believe that in developing the ipLCR, we have effectively removed many of the barriers to VoIP market entry that a carrier might face, enabling our customers to take a lead in this rapidly expanding market."
The new ipLCR Gateway into the London Carrier Ring will also allow new entrants to the VoIP market, including consumer ISPs and VoIP Managed Service Providers to gain access to Europe's most competitive rates for international voice termination, further increasing the appeal and rate of adoption of VoIP based telephony services.
Fibernet has signed five beta trialists who immediately recognised the benefits of connecting to the ipLCR. They are Telstra, Thus, Lebara, iBasis and Gamma Telecom.
Colin Smith, Head of Commercial Management, Telstra Europe Ltd said, "Since joining the LCR in 2004 we have been continually impressed with the service. The ipLCR continues the tradition of good economic sense, flexibility to scale up or scale down without being tied in and provides quick, easy, low cost, TDM and now IP connectivity to other carriers we previously could not reach."