In a good sign for a telecommunications segment that insiders say is gaining traction in this slower economy, a Miami-based Internet service provider reportedly has chosen Acme Packet’s so-called “Net-Net 9200” session border controller to bring in more customers.

 

Officials at Burlington, Massachusetts-based Acme Packet (News - Alert) say InPhonex, the ISP, already is a customer, serving about 200,000 directly VoIP subscribers. This year, the company plans to exceed the 1 million mark, and InPhonex (News - Alert) chose the Net-Net 9200 – similar to the 9000 model, pictured below – to reach its goal.

 

According to Matt Bramson, chief sales officer for InPhonex, the company supports more than 200 types of user equipment, so it needed a highly versatile platform that would be powerful enough to work with all of them.

 

“The fact that the Net-Net 9200 features 100 percent hardware redundancy was also a significant factor in our decision,” Bramson said. “With the number of subscribers and resellers we service, the variety of services we offer and the highly competitive nature of our business, we simply can’t afford the risk of service outages, especially as we continue to grow.”

 

As TMCnet has reported, just as mobility is emerging as an attractive option in this economy, with its inherent cost-savings, so VoIP, with its lower costs and increasingly reliable and high quality, is poised to gain a healthy share of the voice communications space.

 

Experts already have told us that VoIP will gain a greater appreciation from the federal agency that regulates communications in the United States under President-elect Barack Obama’s administration. They’ve also said that VoIP stands to get better carrier interconnection rights and recognition among policy-makers that the telecommunications world is evolving toward Internet telephony.

 

As Sam Li, chief executive officer and co-founder of Clearsight Networks told TMCnet in an interview here, demand for VoIP test solutions remains very healthy. Li’s Fremont, California-based company provides network monitoring and analysis tools for real-time application troubleshooting.

 

Officials at InPhonex say they selected Acme Packet’s Net-Net 9200 platform for its media capacity, high availability, security and service reach maximization.

 

Acme Packet says that a single Net-Net 9200 SBC supports up to 128,000 media sessions, which InPhonex believes will be necessary to support the incremental VoIP traffic generated as the result of the subscriber growth it is forecasting. The solution also provides 100 percent hardware redundancy in-chassis with check-pointing of signaling, media and configuration state for no loss of service.

 

Also, officials at InPhonex say they’re concerned with protecting its service infrastructure against Denial of Service attacks, which are potentially catastrophic to revenue-producing VoIP services. The Net-Net 9200 incorporates Acme Packet’s Net-SAFE architecture, providing InPhonex with the necessary protection against service outages and loss of revenue caused by malicious or even non-malicious attacks.

 

According to Dino DiPalma, vice president of sales and business development for Acme Packet, InPhonex is a unique customer because it originated the concept of turn-key private label VoIP.

 

“Their choice of the Net-Net 9200 will help them continue to grow their subscriber base without compromising the overall service quality and consistency that has helped them become so successful,” DiPalma said.