Sprint to offer SIP trunking in 12 European countries

Sprint (NYSE: S) is expanding the reach of its SIP trunking solution for businesses into 12 European countries, a move that will enable it to create a larger bond with its business customers that have a presence in the region.

The service provider will now offer the service in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Because SIP trunking uses "virtual trunk" over one IP connection, a business can immediately cut "physical trunk" costs by converging their voice and data traffic on its MPLS network infrastructure.

A multisite business can use the same set of SIP trunks while preserving their existing local telephone numbers, calling plans and emergency service applications. As a result, they will reduce the amount of trunks they need to implement SIP trunking in the available European locations.

Other features of the service include SIP toll free service and a wireless toll-free SIP trunking feature that provides on-net calling to a customer's toll-free service, which means that the toll-free customer does not incur any usage charges for calls originating from a Sprint wireless subscriber.

Already, the SIP trunking expansion is benefitting CORT, a home and office furniture provider for Fortune 500 companies and the U.S. government. After implementing Sprint's IP/MPLS service, it added SIP trunking to serve its 145 domestic and international locations in United States and in Europe.

"Sprint SIP Trunking has helped CORT eliminate redundant telephone and data networks and reduce the number of PBXs thus streamlining our network, bringing us significant cost savings, quality of service and helping to ensure business continuity," said Tom Mattingly, project manager -- Information Technology and Product Development for CORT, in a release.

The launch of SIP trunking in these European countries is enhancing Sprint's competitive stance in the domestic and international business wireline services space.

In tandem with the SIP trunking expansion, Sprint has been continually upgrading its global MPLS network and Ethernet capabilities through E-NNI (external-network to network interconnection) agreements with other carrier partners. These efforts helped it up its profile from niche player to challenger on Gartner's latest Magic Quadrant for Global Network Service Providers report issued in April.

For more:
- see the release

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