December 23, 2011

Sprint Introduces SIP Toll Free Service

By Raju Shanbhag
TMCnet Contributor

Allowing businesses to take advantage of their SIP trunks and existing communication system to make their own routing decisions, Sprint (News - Alert) has unveiled a new SIP Toll Free solution.

Along with the award-winning, flexible and congestion-free Sprint Global MPLS network, Sprint SIP (session initiation protocol) Toll Free delivers inbound toll-free calls over SIP Trunking. Toll-free calls originate in the PSTN (public switched telephone network) and are transported over the network for delivery via an IP access facility.

Creating an opportunity for savings through elimination of local access lines, premise-based trunking equipment and management of multiple providers, a single IP connection delivers traffic without costly gateways or bridges.

“Sprint's SIP Toll Free solution offers businesses complete control over their inbound toll-free calls, putting call management and more efficient routing and termination decisions into their hands,” said Monnie McGaffigan, vice president of wireline, international and strategic alliances, Sprint. “Our customers can now rely on the features and capabilities of their own enterprise communication system, thanks to network convergence, without having to incur legacy carrier costs.”

Providing a scalable solution far exceeding the capability of a local service provider, businesses can take advantage of shared trunks across time zones and locations. Sprint SIP Toll Free supports customer directed routing at no additional charge using SIP Refer and SIP Redirect.

SIP Toll Free complements the existing ingress routing deployed for Sprint SIP Trunking and, when combined with SIP Trunking, makes it possible for businesses to achieve various benefits, the company stated in a press release.

Recently, the company revealed that it installed Carrier IQ on over 26 million handheld devices. The company continues to urge everyone not to worry because the software is only limited to diagnostic data and doesn't peek into the privacy of subscribers to Sprint's carrier services.

Sprint added that Carrier IQ is active on 5 percent of mobile devices with the implemented software at a time. A recent “research request” puts Carrier IQ in a position with Sprint.

Raju Shanbhag is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Raju’s articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Jennifer Russell