Alteva, Simple Signal Forge All-IP Peering Fabric

Building the momentum behind full-IP voice-and-video networks for business and consumer users, VoIP providers Alteva and SimpleSignal said they have successfully established a peering relationship that allows callers to interconnect over their networks without traversing the legacy PSTN.

Sprung from discussions at the first CTO Summit, held at the VON Conference & Expo in Miami last month, the Alteva-Simple Signal relationship is the first of its kind between VoIP providers. It will allow users to make HD voice and video calls without the inevitable degradation that comes from having interconnections over the PSTN. The new interconnection will lead to a nationwide peering fabric that will connect disparate IP service providers without the settlement fees and quality issues that accompany the traditional, carrier-dominated method of bringing together proprietary networks in different regions.

Based on session border controllers from Acme Packet (APKT), the new IP-peering system will be officially unveiled at Acme’s Interconnect event, next month in Miami.

“Spawning off a lot of the conversations at VON, and some with Acme Packet, Alteva and Simple Signal have embraced the opportunity to do just what we’ve talked about: to bring two networks together as one to deliver HD voice and video,” said Alteva CEO William Bumbernick.

“Our meeting at VON really started the ball rolling,” added Dave Gilbert, CEO of Simple Signal. “Now we are actually making progress and moving things along, so people will see that it actually works and it’s doable.”

The Alteva-Simple Signal announcement comes a week after Sprint Nextel Corp. (S) said it has created an IP peering fabric, called the Partner Interexchange Network (PIN), that will allow VoIP providers to bypass the PSTN. The momentum behind IP peering is now unstoppable, said Bumbernick.

There are several other efforts to create a seamless all-IP “network of networks,” including the Voice Peering Fabric, created by Stealth Communications, and the Global Alliance Federation, assembled by XConnect, which offers settlement-free peering between members.

“We now have quite a few operators exchanging traffic settlement-free,” said David Schwartz, CTO of XConnect. “This is the future of telecommunications.”

“Whether we build it and that makes sense, or somebody else builds it and we attach to it, ultimately doesn’t matter,” the Alteva executive said. “Personally I don’t care if it’s us or Sprint, as long as it’s the right model and right technology so it creates an open and inexpensive model for communications. Then everyone’s a winner.”

Supported by vendors BroadSoft, Acme Packet and Polycom (PLCM), the CTO Summit at VON included executives from the leading competitive VoIP providers in North America, including Telesphere, New Global Telecom, Inc., and Bandwidth.com. The next steps will include scaling up the peering fabric to include many of the service providers involved in the CTO Summit.

“Now we know how it works,” said Bumbernick. “This is something really exciting happening for the VoIP providers, and everybody knows it’s the next step.”