Lake Buena VISTA, Fla., February 7, 2005 - Cbeyond and a number of leading IP telephony vendors, including Avaya, BroadSoft, Centrepoint Technologies, Cisco Systems, and Mitel, have developed a draft best practices document to guide interoperability between IP PBXs and VoIP service provider networks. The newly released, publicly available SIPconnect Interface Specification leverages the existing family of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and other Voice over IP protocols published by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

The rapid deployment of IP PBXs in business customers and the transition to VoIP by service providers has created an opportunity for direct IP peering between IP PBXs and VoIP-enabled service providers. Direct IP peering between business customers and service providers allows for greater network and cost efficiencies, and provides a higher quality of service and increased features and functionality. Specifically, direct IP peering serves to lower costs for business customers, reduce voice latency, and provide for end-to-end SIP signaling for PSTN termination. End-to-end SIP signaling and a pure IP bearer path lay the foundation for richer communication services than offered by the PSTN today, which are essential to the future of packet-based communications.

Driven by Cbeyond's service requirements, SIPconnect fosters direct IP interoperability among businesses with IP PBXs and service providers by providing a consistent, industry standards-based approach to interconnection using SIP and other standard VoIP protocols. Cbeyond is making the document public in order to gain industry-wide approval of the interface and service.

Cbeyond Communications and vendors Avaya, BroadSoft, Centrepoint Technologies, Cisco Systems, and Mitel have all indicated their intention to develop products and services that comply with the new draft specification. "Cisco Systems is excited by Cbeyond's plans to deliver a service interconnecting IP-based businesses and VoIP Service Providers via an end-to-end IP infrastructure." stated Vikas Butaney, Director of Product Marketing for Cisco Systems. "This offers future opportunity to extend the VoIP and rich-media services enabled by IP-PBXs within a single enterprise out across the Service Provider network and between enterprises." Cisco Systems has indicated that Cisco Call Manager Express and Cisco AS5000 Gateway products already comply with the requirements of the SIPconnect Interface Specification.

Jim Davies, Chief Technology Officer of Mitel, also contributed to the development of SIPconnect. "This initiative is an important step toward clarifying among PBX developers how to build a VoIP interface that will be supported with the same consistency and ubiquity as traditional PSTN services," said Davies. "I believe that the industry as a whole will move rapidly toward the support of SIPconnect on its IP PBX products."

"SIPconnect can help accelerate enterprise adoption of advanced IP and SIP-based solutions," stated Carl Baptiste, Vice President of Product Management for Avaya's Converged Systems Division. "A well defined interface between IP PBXs and VoIP service providers will ultimately lead to increased value for our customers." Avaya's Converged Communications SIP Server complies with the current draft of the SIPconnect Interface Specification.

BroadSoft currently supports SIPconnect on the BroadWorks application server platform. "We are pleased to team with leading companies like Avaya, Cisco, and Mitel to drive further standardization for VoIP services," stated Scott Hoffpauir, Chief Technology Officer of BroadSoft. "With equipment vendors supporting the SIPconnect specification, enterprises with an IP PBX can get advanced services over the network even if they deployed equipment from multiple vendors."

Centrepoint Technologies TalkSwitch IP PBX products are already in compliance with the SIPconnect specification. "SIPconnect defines a clear and consistent architecture that enables IP PBX vendors and service providers to rapidly and cost effectively deploy VoIP services." said Robert Brown, Chief Technology Officer for Centrepoint Technologies. "We are pleased to work with a team of leading companies on the advancement toward standardization of the interface between VoIP enabled networks and IP PBXs."

About SIPconnect.