News Briefs May 2006

Wholesale VoIP carrier iBasis Inc. has interconnected with Stealth Communications Inc.s Voice Peering Fabric (VPF), a peering network that allows members to exchange VoIP traffic without relying on traditional telephone networks. Stealth created the VPF to enable the exchange of calls among different VoIP networks without the cost and potential quality degradation of using the PSTN. By joining the VPF, iBasis said it is able to offer other VPF members high-quality call termination to more than 100 countries through one interconnection.

Level 3 Communications Inc. has completed the approximately $137 million acquisition of Progress Telecom LLC, a wholesale network services company based in St. Petersburg, Fla. Level 3 did agree not to touch certain parts of Progress Telecoms wireless assets. The wholesaler has commercial services agreements in place to provide transport services and operation support to the former Progress Telecom businesses, now operating as PT Access Networks. Progress Telecom will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Level 3; it will do business as Level 3 Communications.

Cogent Communications Inc. now bills wholesale customers at a 90th percentile, rather than the industry norm of the 95th percentile, for excess bandwidth usage. Doing so, the company said, provides even more competitive pricing to customers whose bandwidth requirements vary from month to month. Cogents 90th-percentile billing throws out the highest 10 percent of bandwidth usage peaks.

Howdy, Verizon Partner!

Post-merger, Verizon Communications Inc.s wholesale business has a new name and a new structure. The new Verizon Partner Solutions includes the sales groups from Verizon Wholesale and MCI Wholesale.

It sounds simple enough, but its not. MCIs wholesale products are provided by the new Verizon Business unit, which serves enterprises and only has a retail sales force. Verizon Business sells those services to Verizon Partner Solutions on an agency basis.

And there are some changes in leadership. David Small, senior vice president of marketing and sales for Verizon Wholesale, was promoted to head up Verizon Partner Solutions. The job was vacated by Virginia Ruesterholz, who was named president of Verizon Telecom, reporting to Lawrence T. Babbio Jr., vice chairman and president of Verizon.